E14 OnLove NUPTIALS
in e-mails to his six grown children. But she kept a barrier between them. There was the gossip to worry about and the fear of being tied down — Hamill wasn’t the only one with fans around campus. When he overheard another man ask
Mathis for a big hug, Hamill acted fast. “I did not want him to do that by himself,” he says. So Hamill walked over “and got into the big hug, too.” This year, during a break between square-dancing sets, Hamill invited Mathis to go with him to visit his sister in California in March. “I said, ‘Whoa . . . let me think about it. That could be a com- mitment of some sort,’ ” she recalls. In time she agreed to the trip but was
PAUL MORSE PHOTOGRAPHS
Andrea Press & Kevin Yue
Andrea Press, 31, is a therapist. Kevin Yue, 30, is an environmental engineer. They live in Silver Spring.
Wedding date: Aug. 14. Location: Ritz-Carlton in the District. Guests: 180.
How they met: In January 2009, Andrea attended her first chapter meeting of a service fraternity alumni association. No one else showed for awhile, but Andrea decided to stick around until Kevin, then the chapter’s president, arrived to start the meeting — 45 minutes late. After that, he pursued her via Facebook until they met up to volunteer together at the Maryland Zoo a month later.
The proposal: By October, Andrea and Kevin were talking about marriage enough to start booking wedding vendors. But before Andrea would sign the venue contract, they had to get engaged — officially. Kevin popped the question during a horse-drawn carriage ride on a weekend getaway to Harrisonburg.
The wedding: The couple wanted their wedding to reflect their personalities and interests, so they selected motifs and events that incorporated Andrea’s Jewish background and Kevin’s Chinese ancestry, including a rehearsal dinner at Meiwah, a Jewish marriage ceremony and a traditional Chinese tea ceremony.
The honeymoon: Andrea and Kevin traveled to Greece, where they visited Athens, Crete and Santorini.
— Michelle Thomas MARK GAIL/THE WASHINGTON POST LOTS OF LOVE: The couple’s 14 children, plus many Riderwood residents, watched them exchange vows on Sept. 11. by Ellen McCarthy
When James Hamill’s wife of 55 years died in 2005, a neighbor at Riderwood re- tirement community in Silver Spring, of- fered a warning: “You’re gonna find the women are all after you.” They’ll want to know three things, he recalls her saying: “Are you married? Do you drive? Do you drive at night? If you say yes to the right questions, you’ll be pursued.”
And sure enough, Hamill had his share of admirers. But it turned out the lady he liked most required some significant chasing of her own. He met Marie Mathis at a square- dancing class in October 2008. “See, she’s coming around the ring one way and I’m coming the other. We joined hands and go past,” he says. “And she’s always smil- ing.”
“I smile at everybody,” she explains. “But I didn’t know that,” he responds. “I just knew you smiled at me.” She smiled at him week after week.
BORROWED BLUE PHOTOGRAPHY
Kristin Allen & Chuck Harris
Kristin Allen, 29, is a technical writer. Chuck Harris, 32, is an underground utility foreman. They live in Glen Burnie.
Wedding date: Aug. 13.
Location: Newton White Mansion in Mitchellville. Guests: 135.
How they met: Kristin and Chuck played softball on the same recreational team and after striking up a friendship, they went on a movie date.
The proposal: After Kristin’s business trip in England, Chuck flew to meet her and they went to Paris for a four-day vacation. On the first evening, they visited a park near the Eiffel Tower and christened it “their park.” On the last night of their trip, Chuck convinced Kristin that they had to return to the park to get a brownie from a street vendor. There, he asked her to marry him. (They skipped the brownie in lieu of celebratory crème brûlée and champagne.)
The wedding: When the couple’s original Eastern Shore venue fell through just six months before the wedding, they scrapped plans for a waterfront ceremony and created a modern romantic affair infused with nods to their engagement — including brownie favors and crème brûlée dessert.
The honeymoon: The newlyweds spent a week at Secrets Maroma Beach resort in Mexico. One of the week’s highlights: scuba diving in a cave.
— Michelle Thomas NINE MONTHS IN First the wedding, then the storybook romance by Ellen McCarthy
Todd Bracken and Michelle Snow were hitting a bit of a rough patch. Since their New Year’s Eve wedding, written about on these pages in January, the couple’s plans to open a cupcake shop had hit one snag after another. Then an e-mail arrived on a Friday night, along with the first flakes of a snowstorm. It explained that Health Communications Inc., publishers of the “Chicken Soup for the Soul” series, was launching a line of reality-based ro- mance novels. The editors of “True Vows” had read about Snow and Brack- en in The Post and wanted to build a book around their story. “We were pretty intrigued that they thought we were that intriguing,” says Bracken, 36. They were also taken aback. But after sleeping on it for a few nights and talk- ing with Snow’s parents, they signed on for the project, promising to help author Alison Kent write a novel that mirrored the truth as closely as possible. Kent sent them a four-page list of questions just as the threat of an even bigger blizzard halted construction on their Chevy Chase bakery. Holed up in their Bethesda apartment, the couple
jogged their memories for every detail of their early courtship, writing out more than 20 pages of notes. They unearthed old passwords and logged onto
Match.com to find the online profiles that first attracted them to each other. They put together a package of love let- ters, cards, transcribed text messages and photos so Kent could visualize her subjects and fully understand the way Bracken encouraged Snow to give up an advertising career and pursue her dream of opening a boutique bakery. They were a little nervous about put- ting their story into someone else’s hands for the world to read. “When you reveal that much about yourself, you’re putting yourself out there as far as being vulnerable to people trying to use that against you,” says Bracken.
But the book also became a bright spot in their lives as headaches over the shop piled up. “It really was kind of the highlight
that got us through some of those dark moments before we opened,” says Snow, 34.
MARK GAIL/THE WASHINGTON POST
SWEET ENDING: Todd Bracken and Michelle Snow are the subjects of a romance novel.
For the next two months they e- mailed back and forth with the author, answering questions about specific places, experiences and conversations. Galley copies of the book arrived just as the two were preparing for a soft
opening of “Frosting, a Cupcakery” in late April. By then Bracken had quit his technology job to help run the business and both were working 20-hour days to prepare for the launch. Bracken stole hours here and there to read the draft and offer corrections, but Snow had to satisfy herself with his updates. A month later, when she finally had time to read the book, titled “The Icing on the Cake,” Snow “fell in love with it.” “It was very surreal,” she says. “There were times I put down the book and started crying. . . . It was just really cool, like, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m an outsider, peep- ing into my own life.’ ” There were a few parts of the novel
that veered from reality. Kent had to dream up all of the dialogue and made it seem that the distance between Beth- esda and Springfield, where Bracken used to live, was much more than a cou- ple of dozen miles. But on the whole, the couple says, the novel is remarkably close to the truth. (So much of the truth, in fact, that they asked their parents to kindly skip pages 118 to 120.) The novel, now for sale alongside red
velvet cupcakes and whoopie pies at their bake shop, was officially released on Sept. 13 — exactly two years to the day since they first met.
mccarthye@washpost.com
And even though Hamill, now 83, had a regular dance partner at the time, he nev- er missed the chance to take a spin with Mathis, 77.
She found Hamill charming, but the mother of eight, who lost her husband in 2003, wasn’t looking for a boyfriend. She’d come to Riderwood that year and quickly joined a tennis league, bridge club and singles group to make friends. But what delighted her most was being
‘You feel like a teenager sometimes’
James Hamill & Marie Mathis
on her own — with no one to cook, clean or care for but herself. Their encounters doubled to twice a week when Mathis began attending Mass at the center’s chapel. “She had lots of cre- dentials with me then,” says Hamill, who regularly served as an usher. “She was a Catholic. And she was a good-looking woman.” In late spring 2009, he worked up the
nerve to ask Mathis if she’d join him for an after-dinner drive. With some hesitation, she accepted. “I
was trying to make it so it wasn’t a date,” Mathis says. “I didn’t want to get involved with anybody until I knew them. I figure a lot of people talk — you’re in a small community.” As they headed to Brighton Dam in Brookeville, anxiety bounced between
them. “Somewhere inside me, I’m pretty shy,”
Hamill says. “And I can’t stand to be re- buffed. I didn’t know — she might have.” “Dating after all these years — we both
didn’t know how we were supposed to be acting,” Mathis adds. “You do feel strange.”
But it went well enough for him to pro- pose a second excursion to Great Falls a few weeks later. Riding on White’s Ferry near Leesburg, they slipped into a new level of comfort, discovering commonali- ties in their faiths and families. “We talked so much I didn’t even notice we’d come across the river,” she says. Throughout that summer and fall, they spent more time together, taking day trips and visiting her relatives nearby. Hamill began to include pictures of them
unnerved a few weeks later when he asked, while fixing her computer, “Boy, if you had a man that could work on com- puters and stuff, wouldn’t you like it? Would you like to marry a guy who could do that?” “What? Don’t talk to me about marry-
ing,” she replied. As he hastily got up to leave the room,
she asked if they could just be friends. “That’s a second-best,” he said. Alone in her apartment, Mathis felt a pang of remorse. “I must’ve been think- ing a little bit that, ‘No, I don’t want to let him go,’ ” she says. They decided to go to California, though Mathis insisted that they not tell anyone at Riderwood or her adult chil- dren. “They might be scandalized,” she explains. “Their mother? Going away with a man? Awww, come on.” But every night on their evening walks along the Pacific Ocean, she would take his arm. “That was my idea,” Mathis says, from the couch of her Riderwood apartment. “It was a great idea,” Hamill says, from
the seat next to her. When they got back from California,
Hamill came to that apartment to tell Mathis how much he cared for her and to ask if she would ever consider getting married again. “I wasn’t shopping for a bride, but she
was attractive to me. What’s a guy gonna say?” Hamill says. “I told her with me commitment is a big part of it — without the commitment I could not be happy.” Mathis wavered on her answer then, but when he brought the subject up again over breakfast at an International House of Pancakes in April, she said yes. “I guess I ran out of excuses,” she says, smiling at Hamill. “No. I thought, ‘Well, having my freedom is okay, but maybe it would be nice to be married to you.’ ” Plus, he agreed to her strict stipulation
that she not be required to make him din- ner every night. They would continue eat- ing in the dining room, just as before. One Friday that month they went to a
jeweler to pick out a diamond ring, and when they got back to Riderwood they were, as Hamill puts it, “out to the world.” The ceremony was a full Catholic mass on Sept. 11, attended by the couple’s 14 children and their families, plus a packed house of finely dressed Riderwood resi- dents. After they exchanged vows, Ha- mill, following a jeweler’s advice, lifted a small bottle of Windex from his pocket to help ease a wedding band onto his bride’s ring finger. The following Friday, they took off for a
10-day tour of Switzerland. When Mathis noticed they’d been booked into rooms with twin beds, she called to protest. “I sent the word out all along the line that we should get a queen bed. We’re on our honeymoon,” she says. “Wait until they see us. They probably won’t believe it.” Before they left, Mathis ran into a woman who also remarried late in life. “She said, ‘I want to live a lot longer now.’ And I thought, ‘That’s really true,’ ” she says. “You feel very young. You feel like a teenager sometimes. “It’s a nice feeling, right?” she asks, turning to Hamill. “It is,” he agrees.
mccarthye@washpost.com
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