It’s always when you think you are the least likely to meet THE guy, that you meet the guy. For Hwa, it was the night in Washington D.C. when she agreed to be her friend’s wingman at a bar. While her friend was dressed in cute go-out clothes, Hwa, having recently broken her leg, was in a cast and sneakers.
When they got to the bar, they found that the room was on the 3rd floor, so a bouncer had to carry her up. Shortly after they got there, her friend spotted a cute guy she wanted to talk to, so Hwa decided to make conversation with the guy’s friend, who wasn’t talking with anyone. It was really just something to pass the time while her friend flirted. At the end of the night, the four of them shared a cab to their respective apartments, and the guy’s friend asked for Hwa’s number. She thought she gave him a fake number as she always did with guys at bars. Except… she was a little tipsy and accidentally gave him her real number. She realized this a couple of months later when he texted her, and she had no idea who he was.
Hwa, who is Korean, and Thom, who is half-Venezuelan, are now in their fourth state together, him having followed her to several different job changes, from D.C. to New York, to Connecticut, and now to Charlotte, N.C., where they bought a house together. She says she is every stereotype you can think of for a Type A person, and Thom balances her with his calm, friendly, go-with-the-flow attitude. She pushes and encourages him; he mellows her out.
It was a balance we got to see when we shot their engagement photos at their new home, and again at their wedding at Pomme in Radnor, PA (where Hwa grew up). I saw a girl who could not stop smiling all day, and a guy who relaxed immediately whenever she was by his side. The wedding weekend was fun and lively, with a Korean Paebaek ceremony on Thursday night, and the wedding on Friday, inside Pomme’s beautiful candlelit ballroom. But when I think of these two, I think of them going back to their quiet home in Charlotte, where Thom cooks dinner for Hwa nearly every night (and earns extra happy-wife points with his homemade sangria), and where the two of them have settled back into a life in sync.
Because that is where their magic is – not in the pageantry of ceremonies and sparkly gowns and the clinking of champagne flutes, but in the beauty and simplicity of everyday life. And really, that’s exactly where you want the magic to be.