The Details:

“Hot chili peppers in the blistering sun . . .”  That was the message I casually sent on a dating app in the summer of 2021. It soon  kicked off a romance beyond my wildest dreams. In a simple twist of fate and dumb luck, I found Miranda, the love of my life. 

I did not quite know what to expect when we met for our first date. I was intrigued and attracted from the start, and amazed by our common interests and experiences, but couldn’t have imagined what was in store for me. We talked for hours and finished the evening with a tender kiss — in a Nordstrom parking lot . We met again a few days later (on my 36th birthday) and stayed up until dawn. To my astonishment, I invited her to stay over the next day (she politely declined). We saw each other again, and again, and again. We both knew there was something magical about our connection. It seemed so familiar — like we had known each other for years — and yet so new and exciting and profound. Within a few weeks, I had given her a key to my apartment and rented her a parking spot in my building. 

Later that summer, we had dinner one Sunday evening after not seeing each other all weekend. I dropped the “L” word. We never looked back.

The next few months saw a marathon of dinners out and nights in, concerts, shows, a weekend in the Poconos, trips to New York. We had the unstoppable energy of two people madly in love. When the holidays arrived, I invited myself to spend Christmas with her family in Virginia. The pictures from the trip show us beaming with joy.

In February 2022, we took our first vacation together. After a week in Florida and Puerto Rico together, we were inseparable. We were no longer falling in love - Miranda and I were ‘one heart in two bodies’ (to quote Aristotle).

However, there was one more piece to the puzzle. The other great joys in my life — Grace and Simon — had only heard of Miranda. They of course saw her shoes and brushes and clothes spread around my apartment (they were hard to miss), but she wasn’t their ‘Mirandy’ yet. When that changed, our love was complete. 

My children fell in love with Miranda just as quickly as I did. Soon there were no longer weekends with the kids and weekends with Miranda. It was just the four of us, together. After a vacation in Florida in August 2022, we came back a family. I knew then that I never wanted it to be any other way. 

I asked Grace and Simon about the proposal first - they did not hesitate with their approval. In typical Simon fashion, when I explained that “marriage” meant that Miranda and I would be together forever, he responded “ooh yeah!” With their seal of approval, I asked Miranda to marry me. 

I knew her answer already, and knew she would be emotional, but I was still moved by her tears of pure joy when she said yes. We embraced, crying, on the balcony of the Chelsea Hotel in the freezing January sunshine. On the way home, we wept to Louis Armstrong’s La Vie en Rose. 

It is only fitting we return to the Chelsea — a symbol of so much of what she and I both cherish about music and culture and art and life — to exchange our vows.

Please join us as we celebrate the beginning of this next chapter.