Moments before Blair Julia Smith showed up to her umpteenth first date, this time at a bar in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, she nearly called it off.
“It was cold, it was gross out and I really didn’t want to go,” said Ms. Smith, 39, recalling that day in early January 2023. “I was having a bad week.”
She shook off her reluctance and kept her commitment to meet up with Alexander David Hall, the man she had recently matched with on Hinge. Ms. Smith arrived first to the Long Island Bar.
When Mr. Hall, also 39, entered, Ms. Smith was struck by his curly hair and warming presence. Mr. Hall, who goes by Alec, said she also made an indelible first impression.
“She had this incredible smile and this incredible energy,” he said. “It was pretty apparent I was talking with someone to whom I had a very profound connection.”
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The pair spent the next five hours lost in conversation. Mr. Hall, a composer of contemporary classical music, had in recent years started a side hustle restoring and developing townhouses. He offered to show Ms. Smith his latest construction project, which wasn’t far from the bar. On the way, they stopped by his apartment to grab a bottle of champagne.
“We went to the roof, popped the champagne and looked at the skyline,” Mr. Hall said. Unbeknown to him, Ms. Smith held onto the cork.
“I’m terribly sentimental,” she said. “I love artifacts and symbols of relationships. I pocketed it because it felt like such a special date.”
The next day, Mr. Hall contacted Ms. Smith to let her know he would be walking his dog and passing by her apartment. They lived about a mile apart: He was in Boerum Hill; she was in Fort Greene.
“I now realize that is not at all where he would go with his dog,” said Ms. Smith, a freelance writer with a bachelor’s degree in English from Union College. “It was quite deliberate.”
Because of their proximity to each other and because neither of them had traditional office jobs, they were able to spend a lot of time together and advance their relationship.
Mr. Hall, who grew up in Toronto, was introduced to scores of Ms. Smith’s friends, whom she had met during her 15-plus years of living in New York. “He was always so game and so happy to take on my world and to know my friends and to love them, too,” she said. “That was really affirming to me.”
Before meeting Mr. Hall, Ms. Smith, who grew up in Atlanta and moved to New York in 2007, said she had become resigned to the possibility that she might never get married and instead prioritized cultivating close friendships.
“I had taken a lot of the pressure off when I met him, which allowed me to see so much more beauty in him,” she said. “He’s this brilliant thinker, an absolute musical genius. He’s excitable and passionate and deeply devoted.”
Just two months into dating, Ms. Smith accompanied Mr. Hall to Austria, where his work was performed by the pianist Stephane Ginsburgh. Mr. Hall has a bachelor’s degree in music from McGill University, a master’s degree in music from University of California San Diego and a Ph.D. in music composition from Columbia.
“I feel like she is my perfect counterpoint,” Mr. Hall said. “She is calm, composed, has a kind of emotional balance that I’m sometimes not able to find.”
For their one-year anniversary, Ms. Smith surprised Mr. Hall with a gift: the champagne cork from their first date, encased in a display covering. Seven months later, in August, Mr. Hall proposed and hosted a surprise engagement party at the bar where they met.
The couple married Dec. 15 at the Angel Orensanz Foundation, a synagogue on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Dr. Richard Koral, a member of the clergy at the New York Society for Ethical Culture, officiated in front of 220 guests.
Mr. Hall’s grandmother gifted him her father’s wedding ring. It was inscribed with a wedding date, Dec. 15, 1928, which coincidentally, was the same day Mr. Hall and Ms. Smith were married — 96 years later.
In a nod to Ms. Smith’s fondness for her home in Brooklyn, every table at the reception was named for a Brooklyn street that holds meaning for the couple, including Smith and Hall Streets. Ralph’s, the Fort Greene grocery store that Ms. Smith patronized for years, was recreated under a canopy tent, allowing guests to grab late-night snacks from the “fauxdega.” The couple left the wedding in a 1967 yellow Checker-style cab.
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