Weddings & Engagements

For one family, lightning struck twice. Ethan L. Murray ’05, who encouraged Matthew M. Mulder ’05 to date his sister

Amara L. Murray ’03, is now engaged to her roommate, Shannon Music ’03.

Amara L. Murray ’03 and Matthew M. Mulder ’05

Amara L. Murray ’03 and Matthew M. Mulder ’05 met when Ms. Murray supervised Mr. Mulder at the Harvard Square Homeless Shelter his freshman year. It wasn’t quite love at first sight.

“At first I just thought of her as a great supervisor at the homeless shelter,” Mr. Mulder says. “Since we started dating, I have learned more and more each day what a wonderful person she is. As we fell more and more in love with one another, we both knew that we wanted to spend the rest of our lives together.”

Mr. Mulder did not ask Ms. Murray out until Valentine’s Day his sophomore year. The relationship still progressed slowly. “Freshman year, Amara’s younger brother Ethan [L. Murray ’05], who was in the Glee Club with me, encouraged me to invite Amara to the Glee Club semiformal dance at the end of our freshman year. It turns out that it was some of the best advice I’ve ever gotten, and I’m very excited that Ethan will now be my brother in law.”

Mr. Mulder gained her parents’ blessing and planned a romantic proposal at her family’s oceanside home in Jamestown, R.I.

“We woke up at sunrise and kayaked out about half a mile to Hope Island, a little uninhabited island in the bay,” says Mulder. “We went up on to a rock and I got down on my knee and proposed to her there. It was a very happy kayak ride back to her house.”

The couple will be married on July 30 in Jamestown.

In the fall, the couple will move to North Carolina while Ms. Murray interviews for medical school. The two will then travel to Kenya to work at the Ugunja Community Resource Center, “an organization that operates programs in sustainable agriculture, health and disability, education and women’s empowerment,” says Mr. Mulder.

Finding love at Harvard, though difficult, is “great!” he says. “I feel so very fortunate that I met Amara at school; she has brought so much joy and happiness to my life, and I’m so thankful to God that we’ll be together again, and that we’ll be staying together, after two years apart.” —A.M.L.

Shannon Music ’03 and Ethan L. Murray ’05

For Ethan L. Murray ’05, Thanksgiving is a holiday for which he is particularly thankful. His junior year of high school, Mr. Murray’s older sister, Amara Murray ’03, was accompanied to the family Thanksgiving dinner in Jamestown, R.I. by her Lowell House roommate, Shannon Music ’03. “I thought, ‘What a great girl,’” Mr. Murray recalls. “And then the next year, she came again for Thanksgiving and I thought, that’s the kind of girl I’d like to marry.”

Ms. Music, a 25-year-old currently working in non-profit consulting, grew up in Costa Rica and had never celebrated Thanksgiving. At her first dinner, she was struck by how caring her roommate’s younger brother seemed when he lent his sweater to a family friend who complained of the cold.

“I was very friendly but wasn’t romantically interested,” she says. The two kept interactions casual over e-mail and instant messenger until Mr. Murray, now 21 and a physics concentrator in Adams House, arrived at Harvard two years later.

The relationship’s starting date is a point of good-natured contention. “I think it started earlier than she does,” laughs Mr. Murray, who says it took a long time to “convince her” to date him. Ms. Music was nervous about how her roommate—Mr. Murray’s sister—would respond to their blossoming romance, and so they took things slowly. They first held hands under a Costa Rican sunset during spring break of Mr. Murray’s freshman year. A few months later they had their first official public date: dinner at Bombay Club before the Lowell House formal.

When Ms. Music’s roommate found out, they realized their concern had been misplaced—Ms. Murray approved of the match.

Marriage was a step Mr. Murray talked about from the earliest stages of the relationship. “Even back in freshman year I was talking about it, and Shannon would say ‘slow down!’” It wasn’t until Ms. Music’s senior year, however, that the plans would begin to take shape. “We were talking about what we were going to do after she graduated and so Shannon knew I was going to propose, she just didn’t know when,” he says.

After Ms. Music’s final college exam, Mr. Murray presented her with his grandmother’s engagement ring at the Bombay Club, the site of their first official date together. He had already received her parents’ approval, after e-mailing them in Spanish (a language he had just started learning at the start of the semester). When she accepted, he showed her the e-mail. “It was very sweet to see my mother’s words,” Ms. Music says. “Amara was also super happy because it was a great thought that we would be sisters.”

Next year, Mr. Murray will be working for Mercer Management Consulting Group in Boston, and Ms. Music will begin classes at Harvard Business School alongside another Murray: Ethan’s 24-year-old brother, Abraham.

After Ms. Music graduates from HBS, the couple plans to host a large Catholic ceremony in Costa Rica. “We want to have everyone there, celebrating together,” they say, tumbling over each other’s sentences. —A.E.L.

Erika M. Cowman ’05 and Michael C. Schetter

Erika M. Cowman ’05 has some advice for Harvard women left lost and lovelorn. “I think more of us should date sailors,” she says. Ms. Cowman speaks from experience: after two years of dating Michael Schetter, a 22-year-old naval officer, she can identify exactly what she sees as the problems with finding love at Harvard. “My relationship was never in this weird limbo of hook-ups,” she says. “I hate the Harvard male’s arrogant attitude of ‘You’re so lucky to have me.’ I’ve seen gorgeous girls get treated badly.”

“Guys at Harvard are basically undateable,” she adds.

By contrast, Ms. Cowman’s relationship with Mr. Schetter has been smooth sailing. When the two met on Valentine’s Day 2002, Ms. Cowman says it was “kind of a love at first sight thing.” Introduced to each other by Ms. Cowman’s roommate, Sarah M. Poage ’05, who went to high school with Mr. Schetter in San Diego, Calif., the two hit it off and kept in touch over the next year while Mr. Schetter was in boot camp in South Carolina. The following Valentine’s Day, they met again and decided to begin dating long-distance.

Ms. Cowman, originally from Houston, Texas, says that “lots of reassurance and compliments”—as well as a degree of caution regarding possible miscommunications on the telephone—have kept the bond between them strong while they’re apart.

Mr. Schetter proposed at the end of March this year while stationed in Washington, D.C. “I said yes before he even finished,” says Ms. Cowman.

The wedding will take place in late April next year in Austin, Texas. In the meantime, Ms. Cowman plans to pursue research in a psychology laboratory, while Mr. Schetter continues his four-year term in the Navy. “I still feel lucky and I still have a huge crush on him,” Ms. Cowman says. —A.E.L.

Lauren A. Jacks ’05 and Keith D. Gamble ’03

The first chapter began in Kirkland House, and so will the next. In October 2002, a friend of Lauren A. Jacks ’05 on the cheerleading squad introduced her to Keith D. Gamble ’03 at a party in his Kirkland suite. It wasn’t quite love at first sight. “He never wears anything but Birkenstocks,” says Ms. Jacks. “But on our first date I know he was really nervous because he was dressed up.”

“We got through some rather awkward dates before we became really interested in and comfortable with the other,” she says. And the awkward dates panned out; the two dated for a year and a half and then Mr. Gamble proposed on Jan. 31, 2004 in San Francisco.

Yesterday, June 8, the day before Ms. Jacks’ graduation, the couple married in a civil ceremony in Kirkland House. The House masters, Tom and Verena Conley, will officiate. Both will change their last names to Jacks Gamble.

Ms. Jacks and Mr. Gamble says they opted for a small and simple ceremony. Family members and a few close friends will be present, but no bridesmaids or groomsmen. The couple will throw a larger celebration on June 25 in Memphis, Tenn., near Ms. Jacks’ family home in Byhalia, Miss.

Dating at Harvard was “hard,” according to the couple. And Ms. Jacks says that she and her fiancé, of Enterprise, Ala., share southern heritage that helped “establish a mutual interest.”

“We’re not sure how we lucked out,” she says. “There are so many wonderful people at Harvard, but so much social awkwardness thwarting the dating scene.”

Indeed, Ms. Jacks says that love has evaded many of her friends. And many are shocked to hear she had found love at Harvard. “Sometimes when people find out I’m engaged they pat my hand like I’ve just told them I have cancer,” she says.

But the couple hope that love has made them happier. “I have become a much healthier person in so many different aspects since falling in love. My [grades] became better each semester,” she says. “Whether it’s causation or correlation, regardless, love and academic or professional success are not mutually exclusive.”—A.M.L.

Veronica R. Heller ’05 and Mark R. Alfono

Veronica R. Heller ’05 met Mark R. Alfono in the summer of 2000, while both studied medieval history at the New Jersey Scholars Program, a camp based in Lawrenceville, N.J.

“Not a hotbed for romance,” Ms. Heller says dryly. (Ms. Heller plans to change her name to Ms. Alfono eventually.)

During the camp, the two never dated—romance was virtually impossible given the camp’s strict parietal rules. But at a camp reunion on Aug. 18, 2000, the two finally became a couple. “It ended up being an ideal situation because there were so many rules in place to keep us platonic at camp,” Ms. Heller says. “It meant that we were best friends after camp.”

Two months later—on Oct. 10—they became engaged to be married. While watching television, Ms. Heller turned to reach for the remote. When she turned back, Mr. Alfono presented her with a ring he had found as a child and kept because it reminded him of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings books.

Ms. Heller says she was not caught unawares. “I would have been surprised if he didn’t propose,” she says. “Such is the intensity of our feelings.”

“I wore the band on my right hand for two years,” Ms. Heller says. They kept the engagement secret until the summer after their freshman year in college. “We went zero to 60 in about two seconds,” she says.

Mr. Alfono nearly gave up his acceptance at Princeton to go to Tufts in order to be close to her. But the couple braved the long-distance relationship. “I figured out that over four years I spent $4,000 and 22 days on buses back and forth to New Jersey,” she says.

“When I told my parents, they looked like I’d hit them with a brick,” she says. But after overcoming their initial shock, the parents were supportive and on Aug. 30, 2004, the couple married in a civil ceremony at the town courthouse in Cranford, N.J. (The courtroom doubled as a petty crime court; a man awaiting a fine ate a Snickers bar through the ceremony.)

Both will attend graduate programs in Princeton next year; Ms. Heller for a doctorate in English and Mr. Alfono for a master’s in philosophy. Looking starry-eyed, she says that kismet happens. “You’ll know,” she says. “From the day I got together with Mark, I knew.”

And despite the couple’s new-found proximity, Ms. Heller’s dating advice remains constant. “Don’t take each other for granted. You have to fight for togetherness.” —A.M.L.

Sorcha A. Brophy ’05 and Jamin D. Warren ’04

Sorcha A. Brophy ’05 and Jamin D. Warren ’04 had a lot in common. Both attended Grace Street Church in Harvard Square and were members of Christian Impact and Stride Rite Scholars. It seemed too good to be true.

And if they had judged by the first date, it would have been.

On a ‘pre-date’ in 2002, Ms. Brophy and Mr. Warren met in a Quad dining hall. “It was absolutely horrid,” says Ms. Brophy. Mr. Warren became hungry and ate before she arrived. “I had to eat alone, and he just watched me, and asked me questions, and I couldn’t think of anything to say,” she says. The meeting was so awkward that Ms. Brophy hopped on the shuttle to head back to Quincy House and the two didn’t speak for six months.

“We both thought we knew, and when things went so poorly we were just confused,” she says. The couple decided to try again, and then dated for two years.

Mr. Warren’s proposal went far more smoothly. Last August, Ms. Brophy went to visit him in New York City, where he lives. Late one afternoon in his apartment, he handed her an envelope with a card and some cash, and walked out. For two hours, Ms. Brophy went on an elaborate scavenger hunt in lower Manhattan.

Mr. Warren had collaborated with local store owners, and directed Ms. Brophy to a playground, a sweet shop, a flower store, and a liquor store in Chinatown. The final clue led Ms. Brophy to Confucius Plaza, across the street from his apartment.

“The clue told me to get someone to help me read the sign. When I got there, there was a 30-foot banner hanging from the building he lives in, with writing in Chinese. I asked about 15 people before I found someone who could read it.”

The sign read “Will you marry me?” in Chinese.

Mr. Warren awaited Ms. Brophy with a candlelit dinner on the apartment building’s roof. “He got down on one knee and proposed…and then we went to go see ‘Napoleon Dynamite,’” Ms. Brophy adds.

The relationship and the proposal both surprised Ms. Brophy. “Two years ago I expected not to get married until I was 40,” she says. “I’ve always been skeptical of people who get married super-early. But when I started dating Jamin I think everyone knew it was serious.”

The couple will be married on July 23 in the First Presbyterian Church of Boca Raton, in Boca Raton, Fla. The couple’s blockmates will serve as bridesmaids and groomsmen.—A.M.L.

Rachel E. Finkel and Joshua Suskewicz ’05

Marriage was the “natural next step” for high school sweethearts Joshua Suskewicz ’05 and Rachel E. Finkel. Mr. Suskewicz, a 22-year-old English concentrator in Currier House, met Ms. Finkel, also 22, in 10th grade English class at Frisch High School in Paramus, N.J.

Of their high school courtship, Mr. Suskewicz deadpans that “we were the last people to know we were a couple.” It took a hike in the Catskills, where they kissed under a waterfall, for the two to cement the bond.

In their senior year, they decided to take the “serious step” of going to college in Boston together. Ms. Finkel graduated this year with a degree in art therapy from Lesley University, which is “literally two blocks” from Mr. Suskewicz’s home in the Quad. “Once that worked out well we decided we may as well make it official,” he says.

Although the setting for the proposal was dramatic—thunder and lightning, rare for the area, raged above the couple as they stood on Weeks Footbridge—the event itself was not. “We had talked about it and [Rachel] knew I was buying the ring,” Mr. Suskewicz says.

After a June wedding in Newark, N.J., with 300 guests, they plan to travel for the summer to Israel, England, Ireland and California. before moving back to the Boston area to look for work.

Ms. Finkel, a guitarist and vocalist, hopes to pursue a career in music or social work, while her fiancé is interested in renewable energy. He has a simple answer when asked why the high school relationship has worked out so well. “We share the same values, tastes and goals. All in all, we have very complementary personalities.” —A.E.L.

Cynthia C. Ellis and Mark L. Hill ’05

I ‘knew’ pretty much as soon as we started dating,” says Mark L. Hill ’05 of his fiancée, Cynthia C. Ellis. But acting on his instinct proved harder than Mr. Hill first anticipated. Although they met in elementary school, they did not start dating until the summer after their senior year in high school.

Once during their three year, 11-month courtship, one wrote suggestions for activities on paper slips and the other would draw one to decide.

On Thanksgiving, Mr. Hill made two boxes—one filled with papers that either said “go get cappuccino” or “go get wine” and one filled with papers that said “river surprise.”

In September, Mr. Hill had asked Ms. Ellis’ parents for permission for their daughter’s hand in marriage. “She thought it was a couple of years down the road, but I could tell that she wanted to get married,” says Mr. Hill. Both parents supported the idea—he says their parents now go out to dinner about once a week—so he planned his surprise.

Ms. Ellis’ and Mr. Hill’s sisters helped him prepare a dock in their hometown of Gadsden, Ala. Later that evening, after running errands and picking up wine, Mr. Hill switched the boxes and the couple headed to the river—where the two boarded a canoe, and he blindfolded her.

“Cynthia started whining from the second we got in the canoe—she was cold, and she wanted to see me,” he says. En route, she endured several re-blindfoldings, misdirections, and near submersions. “She was probably just being nice because I was obviously trying to have a special date but failing at it.”

“On the way, she gently patted my belly and nicely told me to lay off the pizza and sweets because I was getting a bit pudgy,” Mr. Hill says. He directed the canoe to the correct pier, where two bottles of champagne and 600 lit candles were waiting. Once there, he stripped off his sweater and jeans to reveal the source of the pudge—tuxedo underneath.

The ring wasn’t ready, so he proposed with a ring pop. Ms. Ellis said yes.

Bradley James Barnes, a Harvard chaplain, will officiate the Alabama ceremony on July 2. In the fall, Mr. Hill and Ms. Ellis will enter medical school at the University of Alabama, Birmingham.

While Mr. Hill found love far before coming to Harvard—and endured a long distance relationship, as Ms. Ellis attended Wake Forest—he believes Harvard can be a place for romantics.

“I found it before I got here, but many of the role models for my marriage met at Harvard, then got married,” he says. “Though sometimes it seems to be impossible, I know love happens at Harvard because I know some very, very happy Harvard couples.” —A.M.L.

Kelly A. Perry ’05 and Tobias J.E. Carling

Working in a lab for the summer before her senior year of high school, Kelly A. Perry ’05 never imagined she would meet her future husband. But post-doctoral researcher Tobias Carling, standing by the microscopes one day, changed everything.

Ms. Perry thought Mr. Carling “the most good-looking guy” she had ever seen. Noting that her handsome colleague regularly left work with a surfboard in tow, she worked up the courage to ask if he could teach her how to surf at a nearby beach in San Diego, Calif. The two went on a surfing date and were immediately smitten.

“Basically it was clear from the start that we would get married as soon as I was old enough,” says the 22-year-old anthropology concentrator and Pforzheimer resident. As the couple lived apart—Mr. Carling, 32, is now completing a medical residency at Yale—Ms. Perry spent almost every weekend of her college career commuting. “We talk once a day, not for long, but just to touch base,” she explains. “We always know when we are next going to see each other.”

Mr. Carling is originally from Sweden, and Ms. Perry has taken Swedish classes since her first year of college to enable her to converse with Mr. Carling in two languages. One midsummer’s night in Stockholm, during one of the couple’s numerous trips to Scandinavia, Mr. Carling proposed. Although Swedish convention involves the “egalitarian” exchange of gold bands, Ms. Perry says her fiancé followed the American fashion of presenting her with a diamond engagement ring because “he knew I would want that.”

Following graduation, Ms. Perry will work in Connecticut for a direct marketing company, while Mr. Carling completes two more years of surgery residency. They hope to eventually move back to San Diego and make annual visits to Sweden.

The globe-trotting couple will have their July wedding on familiar ground: the seaside park where they had their first date. —A.E.L.

Beidi Gu ’05 and Minhua Zhang ’05

When Beidi Gu ’05 and Minhua Zhang ’05 first met at their Shanghai middle school, sparks didn’t exactly fly. The two had been chosen to co-host the school’s Christmas concert, but Ms. Gu was nervous around her fellow emcee. “He was very famous because he was on student council,” she says. “I was so nervous I didn’t even look at him.”

Some years later, after going on to attend different schools, they met again. Both were assigned to Weld Hall as first-years, and this time, Ms. Gu, now 23 and an economics concentrator in Dunster House, fixed her eye firmly on her middle school acquaintance. Ms. Gu struck up a close friendship with Mr. Zhang during the hustle and bustle of Opening Days.

“Minhua helped me do auditions for singing groups,” she says. “We discovered there were a lot of common topics between us.” A 23-year-old Leverett resident and joint physics and math concentrator, Mr. Zhang, meanwhile, plotted for a first date—but it was difficult to find time amidst the stresses of freshman year. “We first went out at the end of a very busy Expos paper week. I asked her out in Cabot Science Library and she replied by e-mail later that night.”

On that first date, they walked ’round and ’round Harvard Square for hours. Conversation was easy: as Mr. Zhang says, “we really have language and experience to share.” They talked about the sometimes difficult transition from what Ms. Gu describes as the “homogenous Chinese society to the diverse Western society” and enjoyed conversing with each other in a mixture of English, Mandarin, and Shanghai dialect.

The couple became inseparable, spending summers together in Cambridge, Shanghai, and Hong Kong. “Both of us plan for life and do look forward,” says Mr. Zhang. “We weren’t just dating for the sake of dating.” Although they had discussed marriage “on and off,” Ms. Gu says the proposal this past Valentine’s Day came as a “complete surprise.” The couple were so close by then that Mr. Zhang had to fib about his ring-purchasing expedition. He told Ms. Gu that he was “studying in Cabot” when he went to Tiffany’s.

Following graduation, both will join financial firms in New York City: Mr. Zhang at D.E. Shaw and Ms. Gu at Morgan Stanley. “I would never have gotten into the finance field without Beidi,” Mr. Zhang says. “It’s very special to have this relationship in addition to all the excitement of college, and then to be in the same industry afterwards.” Ms. Gu is also counting her blessings. “What are the chances of going to the same middle school [in China] and then getting back together again.” —A.E.L.