How We Met

Aliza, the bride: In 2014, we matched on JSWipe, bonding over having several unlikely and random mutual friends. After exchanging long messages about everything from music and tech to travel and languages, we had our first date at the Santa Monica promenade, which lasted 12 hours! I left that date knowing that I had just met “The One.” We went on to have our second date at Disneyland, which, as a hopeless romantic, was a dream come true. Admittedly, our relationship wasn’t always smooth sailing.

As we each navigated our early twenties and found ourselves living in different places, we dated on and off for a few years. It wasn’t until 2017 that we reconnected once and for all at a Shabbat dinner & the rest was history! In 2019, Nathan proposed to me in front of Sleeping Beauty’s Castle, making our engagement extra magical. My engagement ring features a hand cut diamond from the early 1910’s. Nathan worked with Steve from Korshak Diamond Corporation to custom design both my engagement ring and my diamond wedding band!

Full of excitement and imagination, we began planning for a July 5, 2020 wedding, We chose July 5th as our wedding date because it was the day after Nathan’s grandparents’ wedding anniversary – July 4th. At the time of our choice, they had been married for 65 years and we felt it would be good luck! (They made it to 68 years, before Nathan’s grandma sadly passed away in January 2023.) When the pandemic hit in early 2020, we were left with no choice but to postpone our celebration.

While a party can wait, we felt that we didn’t want to put our love story on hold, so we decided to still get married as planned on our original date in a beautiful intimate ceremony in my parents backyard in Boca Raton, FL. What we lost by having to postpone also afforded us an extra year to fully bring our dream wedding celebration to life. We spent the months leading up to, what would now be our July 4th, 2021 “vow-renewal” and belated reception, planning out every unique detail!Continue Reading