Lisa & Matthew

Lisa and Matthew met near the end of 2014 on somewhat of a double date (awkwardly paired with the other’s friend). It seemed inappropriate to admit that at the time, but they really liked one another. A few months later, Lisa called Matthew for some trademark help the same week he was asked to transfer to Los Angeles for work. Matthew decided there was (hopefully) no harm in finally asking Lisa out. She said "sure". It took weeks to find a time they could both meet and finally settled on a Wednesday in the middle of March, when Lisa was going to be in Brooklyn to see Odeya - her childhood friend who now lives in LA - perform. Matthew jumped at the chance to join even though, he was warned, Lisa's mother, Helen, was likely coming, too. They met at a random bar for a quick drink - Lisa was late, as she always was back then - and then went to the performance. Lisa’s mom arrived and the three of them watched the show together. Afterward, Matthew took Lisa and, to his surprise, her mother out to dinner. After that, the three of them walked to meet Odeya and her husband at a dive bar. Naturally, Lisa's mom joined. It was only when Helen went to the rest room that Matthew and Lisa were able to sneak a first kiss and, when Helen returned, Matthew put the two of them in a cab home. Somehow, Matthew and Lisa found the time for several more dates in the following two and a half months leading up to Matthew's move... and you know (most of) the rest!

Matthew started thinking about getting an engagement ring in the early summer of 2017 and set to collecting all of the jewelry photos and designer names Lisa had mentioned or shared the two years they had been together. Outwardly he had casually ignored each hint for gifts of jewelry, but secretly had saved all of them in a folder called "Receipt" ... so Lisa definitely wouldn't look inside! Soon after, he reached out to a friend whose mother works in the diamond industry. After countless calls, emails, store visits, a visit to a gemstone dealer in NYC and a trip to LA to choose the diamond, and some direction for the jeweler to adjust his CAD drawings for the setting a touch, what was hoped to be the perfect ring was made and shipped to NYC. Lisa had told Matthew many times that she liked colored stones and didn't much care for diamonds. When she was fawning over gemstones in India, Matthew noticed she seemed the most excited about sapphires, her birth stone. Everything Lisa was excited about was yellow gold. She told Matthew that she wanted to pick out her own ring, so she wasn't stuck pretending to like something more traditional, like the rings Matthew had originally admired. But Matthew wanted a diamond, didn't prefer yellow gold for an engagement ring, and he didn't like the idea of Lisa seeing "the ring I picked and Matthew paid for" when she looked at her hand each day. And so, after an emotionally-intensive August, a three-stone ring with a diamond center and a pair of sapphires (so that, if the ring was all wrong, Lisa could have a pair of birth stone earrings and a diamond to re-set as they chose) was designed, purchased and shipped. The ring was a complete compromise on what each of them originally wanted, while it simultaneously did not compromise on anything... much like the lives Lisa and Matthew have forged together (we know, we know… 🤢).

The ring arrived in NY on the last day of August. Matthew intended to propose on Lisa’s birthday trip to Europe about 1.5 weeks later. Plagued with fear of not finding the right time or place in Prague, of having to propose at TSA if they searched his bag, of Lisa finding the ring while they were traveling, of having to choose -- more or less -- between proposing on Lisa's birthday while on a guided tour of Prague or on 9/11, Matthew was anxious about the execution, but was excited and ready to propose. The week before their trip, Lisa casually mentioned that her friend Odeya would be back in town from LA the next week to perform in the same showcase, at the same venue and on the same night of the week that Lisa and Matthew had their first date. Matthew immediately joked that Lisa's mom would have to come. That Wednesday was a full moon, so Matthew thought Lisa was more likely to do something crazy... like say "YES!" Before the show, they met at the same random bar as their first date. They were trying to pin down exactly which table they sat at 2.5 years earlier when Matthew declared he had something for Lisa. He reached into his bag and... pulled out a greeting card. "You are the best part of my day" read the cover, and on the inside it started "...and you have been for the 903 days since we last sat at this bar together, about to embark on an adventure neither of us would possibly have believed at the time..." As Lisa read the card, she started crying… and her expectations for some celebration and acknowledgment of them reliving their first date had been met. They went to Odeya’s performance, joined by Helen and Lisa’s other childhood friend, Tara, then trekked to the same dive bar they went to on their first date, joined by Helen, Tara, Odeya and Odeya’s mother. Instead of sneaking a kiss this time, Matthew managed to quiet the group and kneeled between some old pinball machines and asked Lisa to marry him.

At our wedding around 10:30, we will be having a big, fun, dance party! DJ'd on a killer sound system by the current maestro from The Loft, Douglas Sherman, we are hoping our friends who like to stay out and dance will enjoy wrapping up our wedding with an epic boogie session. Here is some info on the Loft, which is the inspiration for our dance party and will be largely emulated for the evening! (thanks, Pitchfork and Tim Lawrence!) "New York’s dance club influence can be traced back to the moment at the beginning of 1970 when David Mancuso hosted the first in a series of shimmering house parties that came to be known as the Loft on Valentine’s Day in 1970 [what will be just over 48 years at our wedding], the party from whence all other modern dance music emanates. This is not an exaggeration. From Larry Levan’s Paradise Garage to Frankie Knuckles’s Warehouse parties in Chicago, from the Hacienda to Berghain to that illegal loft space you went to the other weekend in Bushwick (or Berlin, or Budapest), whether you move to disco, house, acid, techno, trap, dubstep or whatever new dance genres might arise—all can claim the Loft as paterfamilias. And while Loft parties are thrown intermittently in London and Tokyo, New York City will always be the Loft’s home." "The Loft is the source of every dance party and yet no dance party feels quite like the Loft. There’s no mixing of records, the music instead left to transport you to an otherworldly realm. After every song, the crowd breaks into a round of applause, the next record already gearing up to take the dancers to another place." "The Loft is unique and irresistible," says veteran DJ-dancer Danny Krivit, whose 718 Sessions are one of the hottest parties in the city at the moment. "It's about good friends meeting in a homey setting and listening to excellent music on a great sound system. The Loft is timeless."