Kinda like Katherine Heighl's character in 27 Dresses if you recall, except i do not keep a scrapbook of newspaper cutouts. That's extreme!
Anyway i just read about this couple who first crossed paths when they were kids and just had to share their story.
Love the last quote by the way.
Now if only The Straits Times could look into a similar column some day.
(If Sumiko Tan's column about her aversion to air condition and sleeping in separate beds can make it into papers, i don't see why a weddings column can't!)
(From The New York Times)
By DEVAN SIPHER
Published: September 17, 2010
That’s all that Ariana Rockefeller was allowing herself in 2005, as she explored the hidden coves of Mount Desert Island in Maine with Matthew Bucklin.
They sailed around the lobster-claw-shaped haven with its pink granite bluffs, where Mr. Bucklin was raised amid the thousands of acres that the late John D. Rockefeller Jr., Ms. Rockefeller’s great-grandfather, had donated to what is now Acadia National Park.
“Summer girl meets local boy” is how Ms. Rockefeller, 28, summed up their story.
But like characters in a Nicholas Sparks romance novel, their courtship was complicated. In fact, Mr. Bucklin, whose family has owned a construction company in Northeast Harbor, Me., for more than a century, waited years for a first date.
They initially crossed paths as children on the island. “I distinctly remember him and his three brothers rolling around in the sand,” Ms. Rockefeller said.
As Mr. Bucklin, now 27, recalled, “She wanted to come over and play, but her nanny wouldn’t let her.”
It was more than a decade later, in August 2003, when they were officially introduced at a party in Northeast Harbor. She took note of his six-foot athletic frame, but what most intrigued her was the weight of his words. (Mr. Bucklin, who had been changing his siblings’ diapers from the time he was 5, carries himself with a seriousness that belies his age.)
“He was calm and confident,” said Ms. Rockefeller, who is known for her own intrepid spirit. They bonded over stories of recent semesters abroad; she in Paris and he in St. Petersburg. “He wanted to make something of himself,” she said, contrasting his aspirations with those of men she’d met who “just want to live off their parents’ trust funds.”
As for Mr. Bucklin, he was smitten by her worldly poise and unaffected humility. “I thought she was beautiful, down to earth and easy to talk to,” he said.
But Ms. Rockefeller, wary of the attention that comes with her surname, was not prone to casual liaisons. Especially in this small Maine community. “Everyone knows everybody’s business,” she said. “I always worked hard to stay low profile.”
Over that summer and the next one, she welcomed Mr. Bucklin’s friendship but not his romantic overtures. “He’d try to hold my hand in movies and things like that, and I’d skillfully get out of it,” she said.
He was uncomplaining and undeterred. “I realized quickly that she didn’t respond well to people pursuing her aggressively,” he said.
He also learned how easily she could flee when she abruptly departed college, and the continent, to live in northern Brazil, where she volunteered at an elementary school, run by a nonprofit organization there.
“I’m a Gemini,” Ms. Rockefeller said. “I love to change things up.”
In 2005, however, she was distressed by the changes thrust upon her as her parents, David Rockefeller Jr. and Diana Newell Rowan, underwent a difficult divorce. Ms. Rockefeller returned to the island that summer seeking its healing powers, and what she found was Mr. Bucklin offering steadfast support.
“He made me feel very calm,” she said, “and very happy.” He was weakening her resolve against dating him, until one evening: “I remember just sighing and thinking to myself, Here we go. And then I leaned in and kissed him.”
It was what he had been waiting for.
Days of swimming in the ocean followed nights of stargazing in each other’s arms. “I was having the time of my life,” she said. But she insisted it was just a summer fling.
He disagreed. Having recently graduated from Colby College, he took a job in the fall as a financial analyst in New York, so he could be near her while she finished her degree in political science at Columbia.
But she viewed his proximity with alarm. Instead of being an escape from family drama, he was becoming an entanglement.
“I freaked out,” she said. She also relocated to a surfers’ shack in Hawaii. “I thought if I was in a relationship, I was going to lose part of myself.”
It was Mr. Bucklin who acutely felt a loss. “She was the only one I’ve ever been totally comfortable with,” he said.
He set out to be that person, crossing tasks off his “to do” list, including continuing his education at New York University and volunteering with Habitat for Humanity.
After four years, he reached one of the last items, what he called “getting in touch with my roots,” becoming the fifth generation to work at his family’s business, now owned by his father, Charles E. Bucklin.
There on Mount Desert Island, Ms. Rockefeller and Mr. Bucklin reconnected when she visited last summer. “Matt proved that he was really serious about me,” she said, still sounding grateful and surprised. By Christmas she was the one making plans to relocate to Maine to be near him.
But then the old doubts of losing her independence crept in. “I was afraid to end up where my parents had been,” she said. In February, she informed Mr. Bucklin that she was moving to Los Angeles.
“I wasn’t quite sure if she wanted to run away from me, or just wanted to feel chased,” he said. A chase is what she got when he followed her to L.A.
“I always knew I loved her,” he said. “Seven years of waiting and friendship, that was the hard part.”
He proposed that same month. Not only did she accept, but she also wanted to elope.
“I was used to running away,” she said, but with his encouragement, she had a change of heart. “I finally just wanted to face everything and do things gracefully and properly.”
On Sept. 4, more than 200 wedding guests assembled on Mount Desert Island in a shaded glade within the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Garden, created by the bride’s great-grandmother, who was a founder of the Museum of Modern Art.
A puff of white cloud strayed across a powder-blue sky as Ms. Rockefeller walked the aisle of fresh cut grass in a Monique Lhuillier embroidered lace sheath gown and floor-length veil.
The Rev. Mary B. Johnstone, an Episcopal priest, led Ms. Rockefeller and Mr. Bucklin in their vows on an altar of moss-covered granite before an 11-foot limestone Chinese pagoda.
The bride looked serene and strong as the couple stood side by side, framed by two white birch trees gently bending toward each other, their branches entwined.
During the cocktail hour, friends and family wandered through the garden’s riotous blossoms. Japanese anemones, giant yellow daffodils and blood red Spartacus dahlias competed for attention with mounds of fresh lobster meat and oysters on the half shell, while a bald eagle soared among the towering pines.
Mr. Rockefeller toasted the couple, welcoming his new son-in-law to the family and their homes, “where we lose our socks and try to find our center,” he said.
With the sun hanging low in the sky, Mr. Bucklin took his wife on the dance floor and held her close as they swayed to “Summer Wind,” the Johnny Mercer classic.
“He keeps me grounded,” she said, “and I keep him on his toes.”
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