How They Met.
We both grew up in Laurel, MD and were in the same first grade class at St. Mary of the Mills school. We only had one year in school together, but our families were both involved in our parish, and his family moved across the street from one of my friends a few years later, so we remembered each other. My family moved to Pennsylvania when I was 10, and Jake’s family stayed around Laurel. We didn’t keep in touch with each other.
Flash forward to 2017, Jacob graduated boot camp and I graduated from Mount St. Mary’s. In 2019, my New Year’s resolution was to “be more carefree,” so when Jacob showed up as a suggested friend on Instagram and I saw that he was a total hunk now, I had to add him! After thinking of a dorky excuse to start talking to him, we started chatting for the summer. I was very happy when he remembered me too after all those years. At the time, he was stationed in CA at the Coast Guard nursing school and since this was my “carefree” year (and he wasn’t allowed to leave), I decided to fly out there over Labor Day weekend. We spent the weekend exploring Monterey & San Francisco. In November, he graduated from nursing school and was stationed back home on the east coast, in Washington DC. This was lucky because we were now only two hours driving distance apart!
Tell Us About the Proposal.
Jacob’s family takes an annual vacation to Canada every year and spends a week on a lake. Since the borders were closed in 2020, the vacation was in NY instead. Jacob invited me on the trip last year! I knew a proposal was coming, so I told him to make sure I look nice whenever he decided to do it. I didn’t want to be a frizzy haired mess. So he had a plan that he would tell me to wear the same skirt I wore when he picked me up from the airport in CA the previous year, and that would be my hint to make sure I look nice. On the last full day of vacation, he came to wake me up by getting down on one knee with a ring box. I woke up with my frizzy curly hair and said “no no no no!” He opened the box and it was just a toy soldier in it. He thought he was so funny for pranking me. (It was pretty funny)
That evening, he redeemed himself with the actual proposal which was very romantic. Just after sunset he proposed out on the dock. He showered me with compliments and then asked me if I’d marry him, to which I said “yeah yeah yeah yeah!” to make up for my earlier “no’s.” Then we saw three shooting stars above us and fireworks across the lake!
Why do you love one another?
Angela’s response – We’re each other’s best friends and feel most like ourselves when we’re together.
Jacob’s response – I’ve always heard that you shouldn’t have to change yourself for someone else. Well, Angela has never once made me feel like I needed to change who I am, but just being with someone so wholly good makes me want to be a better person and a better man. Find someone who makes you WANT to be better. Find someone that you can be yourself with and know that it’s enough for them.
What is your favorite aspect of one another?
Angela’s response – Jacob’s sense of humor is my favorite thing about him. He is extra goofy when we are together and it makes me feel we’re just little kids again. He brightens me up.
Jacob’s response – I like how funny she is. She always had it in her, but she needed someone to be goofy with. She always makes me laugh and I have so much fun with her.
What details in the wedding were really important to you?
From the very beginning, my top priorities for the wedding were Jacob, the Mass, and photos. We’re getting married at the church where I was baptized, where we received our First Communion together, and where my parents were married 30 years ago. Keeping that in mind helped us through the reception venue change and luckily we can still take our photos at the original reception location, so we got the best of both worlds!
How has COVID-19 affected your planning process?
We got engaged in July 2020, and were hoping that everything would be cleared up by our wedding date, in April 2021. So we planned our wedding with the best case scenario in mind, but agreed from the beginning that we did not want to change our date if we had to adapt for the reception part of things. When we realized that our original reception venue was likely not opening up in time, Jacob’s family found a backup location for us to still have a reception! We chose before sending out our invitations (about 6 weeks before the wedding) that we were going to officially switch locations. Jacob’s family is very talented so most of our “vendors” are actually his family members and they are very flexible. From Wedding Mass Musicians, to Baker, to Bartenders, to DJ. All of these roles are family members. We were set on Mission BBQ for our catering and luckily they were able to switch our contract to a different location easily.
Our wedding day is now a “wedding road trip”! I love little weekend trips so it’s fitting that our wedding has become a little adventure across MD & VA. Our first little road trip together was from Santa Rosa to Monterey CA and our honeymoon will be a road trip too!
