E10 OnLove NUPTIALS ALLIE HAWKINS Caroline Mellinger


& Hunter Wilfore CarolineMellinger, 24, is a sales representative.HunterWilfore, 26, is a financial adviser. They live in Virginia Beach.


Weddingdate: Sept. 7.


Location:Currituck Soundwaterfront; theBlue Lady house,Corolla,N.C. Guests: 110.


Howtheymet: In the summer of2005, Caroline andHunter, then college students, and became friendswhile working at an Italian restaurant in the OuterBanks. Once the season ended, the two returned to their respective colleges— 11 hours apart. Things turned romantic afterCaroline visited Hunter at school later that year.


Theproposal:Hunter toldCaroline they were scheduled to do a finalwalk- through at the house they had just purchased, but upon arrival, he stopped on the front porch and askedCaroline to marry him. After she said yes, theywent toCaroline’s favorite restaurant,where her parentswerewaiting as a surprise.


Thewedding: As a nod to their relationship’s roots,Hunter andCaroline incorporated beach and summertime elements. They held their ceremony at theOuterBanks shoreline,where Huntermade his entrance on a fishing boat, then celebratedwith a reception featuring frozenmargaritas, orange crush cocktails, fresh seafood and flip- flops for their guests.


Thehoneymoon: The newlyweds spent aweek inBarbados,where theywent on a catamaran cruise and snorkeled among sea turtles.


—MichelleThomas KATHERINE FREY/THE WASHINGTON POST LASTING LOVE: After dating for over 10 years, Samira Cook and Gregory Gaines were married at theNewYorkAvenue Presbyterian Church onNov. 14. BY ELLENMCCARTHY In the summer of 2005, Samira Cook’s


days were busy withmission work serv- ingAIDS patients in SouthAfrica. But in the quiet moments at night, she prayed about her boyfriend back home. “What do I dowith him?” she remem-


bers asking God. “Please send himaway if this isnot it, cause it’s getting really too deep. I’mnot going to be able to pull out of this andlookfor your voice if youdon’t end it rightnow.” Cook had first encountered Gregory


Gaines almost six years earlier. Shewas a seniorat theall-women’sMountHolyoke College. Along with a few friends, she’d traveled to nearby University of Massa- chusetts-Amherst to pass out fliers for a party they were hosting the following weekend. She thought Gaines was cute as she


handed himthe party invite and noticed hima fewhours later at a campus conve- nience store. Cook devised a plan to bump into Gaines and give him“a look,” butwhenshebrushedhimintheaisle,he quickly apologized and walked off with- out catching her eye. When she spotted himdancingwith a


PATRICK SMALL


Lena Bloom& JoshuaHershkovitz


Lena Bloom, 29, is a public health practitioner. Joshua Hershkovitz, 33, helps manage a family business and is an aspiring restaurateur. They live in Baltimore.


Wedding date: Oct. 17.


Location: NewtonWhite Mansion, Mitchellville, Md. Guests: 180.


Howthey met: In the spring of 2008, Lena moved to Baltimore for graduate school. She wanted to meet people in her new home, so she signed up for Match.com and contacted Josh shortly after. They got together for drinks at an Irish pub that summer and followed up with a second date two days later.


The proposal: Nine months later, Josh took Lena to Baltimore’s Oceanaire Seafood Room. They were walking back to the parking garage when Josh claimed to have an untied shoelace. He knelt to “tie” it and pulled out the ring. Then they spent the next half-hour trying to find their car in the garage.


Thewedding: Josh’s event-planner momhelped the couple organize a romantic, nature-influenced wedding at the NewtonWhite Mansion. They brought in Lena’s family rabbi from Cincinnati to perform their ceremony and skipped the bridal party in lieu of having their parents and siblings with them under the chuppah. Their reception incorporated locally brewed beer and locally sourced flowers.


The honeymoon: The couple journeyed through Italy, visiting Rome, Florence and the Tuscan countryside.


—Michelle Thomas


youngerMountHolyoke student at their party the following Saturday, Cook tapped the girl and told her it was her turn to watch the coats. With Gaines’s attention finally on her, Cook leaned in and said, “You remind me of someone very special inmy life.” Confused, Gaines took off to consult


with his buddies. “What does thatmean, guys?” he asked. “Theywere like, ‘I don’t know, but you should go talk to her.’ ” The partywound down before he had


thechance.Butoutside,aconfidentCook approached Gaines one more time and askedifhewantedtohangout thatnight. Worried about missing his ride back to UMass, he declined and requested her phonenumber instead. Cook was certain he would call. But


two dayswent by. Then three. Then four. “By day five we were in defense mode, like ‘He’s got some nerve not calling,’ ” she remembers. With the encourage- ment of her friends, she left hima voice mail: “Hi. This is Samira from Mount


Holyoke. You may not realize who I am, but if you know anything, you’ll call me back.” “To this day, I’m like, ‘Uck. Of all the


silliest, stupidest things I’ve said in my life,’ ” she says. Gaines, who hadn’t called out of fear


that he’d mispronounce her name, played the voice mail for his friends before returning the call thatnight. The following eveninghe tookabus to


utes ontheir phone cards ranshort. After a year of the arrangement, Cook


called it off. But their communication never stopped. Even as she moved to Washington to go to graduate school at George Washington University, Cook, who had previously loved dating, couldn’t bring herself to go out with othermen. “Iwas telling him, ‘Here I amin a new city,andIcan’tevenseeanyonecauseI’m


“I found the best there is, and I’m done looking.” Samira Cook & Gregory Gaines


visitCookwhilesheworkedat theMount Holyoke welcome desk. They shared a basket of fries and a couple hours of conversation. The next two nights they talked until dawn, discussing their lives and philosophies and goals for the fu- ture. “It was very intense and rapid right


fromthe start,”Gaines says.By the endof October, thetwowereacouple.Hewould make the 40-minute bus ride almost everynight toensure shegothome safely and spent the little extra money he had treating her to desserts at a sit-down restaurant. When he decided to take a classduringwinterbreak,shelethimlive inher dorm. As he sat on her bed one night, Cook


realizedshewas inlove. “I felt likeI could take care of himforever,” she says. But graduation loomed and by April


she knew that a fellowship would take her to St. Louis for a year. Gaines drove her there before returning to UMass for hisjunioryear.Theysaweachothertwice over thenext 12monthsandattemptedto fuel their relationship with long-dis- tance calls — cut off whenever the min-


so lovesick and missing you — even thoughwe’re brokenup,’ ” she recalls. When it came time for Gaines to


graduate, a lucrative investment bank- ing job lay waiting for him in his home town, Chicago. But Cook urged him to join her in Washington, pointing out internship opportunities that might ap- peal. “It was definitely one of those ‘fork in


the road’moments,”he says. “EventhenI knew that this decision was gonna be where the rest ofmy life goes.” He choseWashington, andCook. Their lives merged as both moved


through public policy graduate pro- grams at GW and started new careers, she with D.C. government, he in educa- tion. Gaines, now 32 and director of operations at a charter school, says that within the first year of meeting her, he knew he wanted to marry Cook. “I was like, ‘This is it. I found the best there is, and I’mdone looking.’ ” Cook,also32,wasnotascertain.There


were things shewanted to accomplish in life beforeconsideringmarriage,andshe worriedthatGainesdidn’t shareher firm


sense of spirituality.Adevastating house fire and her father’s death during her teenage years had taughtCook to rely on her Christian faith. Gaines felt less of a pull toward organized religion. “It’sweird to pray and not have some-


one that you love desperately pray with you,” she says. “In life together, anything can happen. And if we weren’t both gonna solve it the same way . . . I don’t believe that that’s something that could reallywork.” She was relieved that the ring he


bought for their sixth anniversary didn’t comewith a proposal—“I’mgonna have to say no,” she thought when he handed her the box — and prayed for guidance during that summer mission trip in SouthAfrica. The scriptures she found herself read-


ing convincedCook thatGodwantedher to stay in the relationship. And by 2008 Gainesdecidedheneededtobe “plugged into something beyond my own under- standing of the world” and started ac- companyingCook to church. Then it was her turn to wait. Gaines


tookajobhelpingtooverseethedevelop- ment of a data management system for D.C. schools, and while working long hours and organizing his own finances, he let birthdays and anniversaries pass by without a proposal. (For their 10th anniversary dinner, she says she was “Frenchmanicure-prepped,” in anticipa- tionof a ring that didn’tmaterialize.) Last December, at amovie night with


friends,Gaines gave a speech about how much he appreciated all of them. Cook thought he’d just had toomuch to drink — until he got down on one knee and asked if he could keep her company for the rest of his life. OnNov. 14the twoweremarriedat the


New York Avenue Presbyterian Church and serenaded by Gaines’s brother and sister-in-law before a reception at the Hotel Monaco. Both say the 11 years spent getting to that point seemed to pass in a flash. “It still feels brand new,” Cook says. “I still feel giddy when I see him.” After the wedding, she reflected on


their day: “Itwas exactly theway Iwant- ed—hewas there.” mccarthye@washpost.com


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GETTINGBACKINTHEGAME Ultimate payback after a breakup? Plastic surgery BY ELLEN MCCARTHY Forget “Bridalplasty.” The real money


is in “surgical vengeance.” The reality show in which women


compete for pre-wedding cosmetic sur- gery may be getting all the attention, but doctors who ply their trade sculpting bodies and faces know that just as many — if not more — of the patients walking through their doors are motivated not by a new union but a marital breakup. “There are a lot ofwomenwhocomein


either pre- or post-divorce who are looking to make themselves feel a little bit better,” saysMichael D. Cohen, medi- cal director of the Cosmetic Surgery Center of Maryland. The whole story might not come out at the beginning, he says, but once he gets to know a patient, he often starts to hear details of a split. Two weeks ago he did a tummy tuck and eyelid lift on a woman just out of an


37-year marriage, followed by breast augmentation for a woman in her 20s who found out her husband had cheated on her. “She suggested to the people preparing her for surgery that it was sort of payback,” he said. Hence the nickname the procedures


have gained: “vengeance plastic surgery.” It’s become so popular with physician Stephen Greenberg’s clients in New York City that he developed a “divorce pack- age” that gives patients a slight discount if they’re coming off a breakup. (And it’s not just women; Greenberg estimates that 30 percent of the patients taking advantage of the plan are men.) Ann Soriano wasn’t thinking about


revenge. The New York City woman’s husband left after 17 years of marriage, she says. They were separated for several years before she filed for divorce seven months ago. Five months later she walked into the offices of Joseph Eviatar. “I lost a lot of weight, just from the


stress of it all. And if you lose weight because you’re eating well and exercis- ing, it looks good. If you lose weight because somebody walks out on you, you don’t look so good,” says Soriano, a 49-year-old officemanager. After a round of Restalyne injections, she’s feeling better about her appearance and con- templating liposuction for her midsec- tion. “I was just like, ‘Jeez, I don’t want to


grow old by myself. So I’ve got to throw myself out there and see what happens,’ ” she says. “And the first thing [people notice] is the look, unfortunately.” Phil Haeck says that’s a common


theme among his patients: “I’m going back on the market and I’mafraid how I look right now isn’t going to work.” Haeck, president of the American


Society of Plastic Surgeons, says he has two major concerns about clients seek- ing treatments in the midst of a divorce: They’re making weighty decisions dur-


ing an emotionally unstable time. And they sometimes expect that plastic sur- gery will immediately alter their circum- stances in life. “There’s a discussion that has to be


had — do they expect to find Superman or Superwoman the next day after they change their appearance? Because that person may not suddenly drop into their lives just because they’ve had something done,” says Haeck, who practices in Seattle. But, he adds, in the best cases cosmetic procedures give newly single patients an extra shot of confidence as they wade back into the dating pool. “There may be subtle things that happen in terms of their openness to talking to strangers,” he says.


Soriano thinks that might be the case


for her. “It’s time,” she says. “Not neces- sarily to get married again — but to go out, to find companionship.” mccarthye@washpost.com


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