When Alex Patrick Randall and Gregg Kittredge Bonti signed and submitted papers to become registered domestic partners at Brooklyn Borough Hall on April 5, 2024, the ground beneath them shook. An earthquake had rattled New York City.
“We like to joke that our love moved the Earth,” Mr. Randall said.
The couple met in October 2021. When Mr. Randall first came across Mr. Bonti’s profile on Hinge, he liked that Mr. Bonti was a special-education teacher.
“I could tell from that he would be patient and kind and caring,” Mr. Randall, 31, said.
For their first date, which was on a weekday after a long day of teaching, Mr. Bonti, 30, chose Walter’s, a restaurant down the block from his Fort Greene, Brooklyn, apartment. (Walter’s would become a recurring location in their love story.)
The pair sat in the outdoor dining booth and took their time with their meal as they opened up to each other about their upbringings, ambitions and even plans of having a dog one day.
“Previously, I remember I would sit down at a date and know kind of in the first 10 minutes, that wasn’t my person,” Mr. Bonti said.
But on this first date, within the first 10 minutes, he was deeply enamored, Mr. Bonti said. After dinner he showed Mr. Randall around his neighborhood, dropped him off at the Nevins Street subway station and kissed him goodbye. Mr. Bonti then called his best friend, Sami Schwaeber, and told her, “I’m going to marry this man or he’s going to ruin my life.”
For their next date, Mr. Bonti came up to Mr. Randall’s side of town on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, and they sat on a large boulder in Central Park near 72nd Street, where they got to know each other better. And in the months that followed, Mr. Randall was charmed by Mr. Bonti’s daily good morning and good night texts.
In December 2021, Mr. Randall referred to Mr. Bonti as his boyfriend when he bumped into a former work colleague while dining at Walter’s.
“I was like, ‘You just called me your boyfriend,’” Mr. Bonti recalled. Mr. Randall responded: “Yeah, we are.” In August 2022, they moved into an apartment in Fort Greene.
In February 2023, Mr. Bonti was hospitalized from Covid-19, which had him thinking about hospital visitation rights as a same-sex couple. They decided to register for domestic partnership, which grants couples who live together legal benefits like health insurance and visitation rights.
The following month, during Memorial Day weekend, the couple proposed to each other at their apartment and then picked up dinner from Walter’s.
Mr. Bonti is a head teacher at an independent school for children with learning disabilities in Brooklyn. He graduated from the University of Vermont with a bachelor’s degree in early childhood special education and received a master’s degree in childhood special education from Pace University.
Mr. Randall graduated from Columbia with a bachelor’s degree in political science and received a master of philosophy in history from the University of Cambridge.
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On April 5, a year from the day they became registered as domestic partners, the couple, who changed their names to Alex Randall Kittredge and Gregg Randall Kittredge, were married at the Ace Hotel New York in Midtown. Aramael Peña-Alcántara, Mr. Randall’s best friend who received a one-day New York State marriage officiant license, officiated before 120 guests.
The wedding date was 131 years after Mr. Randall’s great-great-grandparents, Gustav Hanson, who had immigrated from Sweden, and Ella Lydecker, born in New York and of Dutch ancestry, were married in Brooklyn on April 3, 1894. Growing up, Mr. Randall heard stories about his family from his grandfather. His grandfather hung their original marriage certificate in his home, which the couple displayed on a remembrance table at the entrance of their wedding ceremony.
At the ceremony at Ace Hotel, Mr. Bonti teared up even before he started reading his vows, grabbing tissues from his front pocket as he spoke. “With you, I feel protected and cared for in a way I never knew I needed,” he said. “In my life and in my work, I’m so used to looking out for others. But with you, I get to let my guard down.”
There were many tears, but there was also joy. Their guests erupted in laughter throughout the ceremony, including when Dr. Peña-Alcántara recounted Mr. Bonti’s confession after the first date that Mr. Randall would either be his husband or “ruin his life.”
After Dr. Peña-Alcántara pronounced them husband and husband, the couple walked out holding hands to a banjo, trumpet and bass rendition of Stevie Wonder’s “Signed, Sealed, Delivered (I’m Yours),” stopping for a few kisses before exiting through the door.
Sadiba Hasan reports on love and culture for the Styles section of The Times.
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