The police broke up the party where David Van Fleet Bloys and Joseph Justin Whited first met in June 2012. But that was the only breakup the two would experience.
The get-together was in Georgetown at the private home of a Washington lobbyist. Zach Robbins, the lobbyist’s assistant and a mutual friend of Mr. Bloys and Mr. Whited, managed the guest list and told Mr. Bloys there was someone he wanted him to meet.
Mr. Whited was unaware of this matchmaking plan. “I came with my roommate,” he said.
This was no frat party. Guests were mostly “post grads and lobbyists,” said Mr. Bloys, who goes by Van. Nevertheless, a neighbor called the police to complain about the noise. So, although the two connected, they didn’t exchange numbers.
Luckily, they bumped into each other not once, but twice at the Penthouse Pool & Lounge, a private club in the U Street corridor of Washington.
At the second chance meeting, in early July, Mr. Whited recalled thinking, “There’s that hot guy from the party. Should I go say hi?” The two exchanged phone numbers and social media handles that day.
“Once we got connected, we quickly got to texting,” Mr. Bloys said. Their first date was a few days later: dinner at a neighborhood wine bar called Cork. “It was nice to be one on one after meeting at a big party, and we hit it off immediately,” Mr. Bloys said.
But the timing wasn’t ideal: Mr. Bloys was scheduled to take the bar exam at the end of the month.
“We knew it would be tough to see each other much after this date,” Mr. Whited said. “But we made a commitment to stay in touch and texted throughout the month.”
After Mr. Bloys took the bar exam, their relationship accelerated, and by late August, the two were official. It was the “weekend when we said the L word,” Mr. Bloys said.
Mr. Bloys, now 38, is a managing counsel at Crown Castle, a real estate investment trust based in Houston. He earned a bachelor’s degree in art history from Georgetown and a law degree from American University.
Mr. Whited, 45, is the chief of staff at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, a government agency. Mr. Whited joined the Navy right after high school and served for 10 and a half years. He holds a bachelor’s degree in liberal studies from Georgetown and is a graduate of the United States Naval War College.
Mr. Whited moved into Mr. Bloys’s condo in June 2013, and that August, the two went to look at an 1820s home in what is fondly known as “Little Washington” in Rappahannock County, Va. “I called it the ‘fall-y downy’ house,” Mr. Bloys said. “It needed work.”
Mr. Whited later bought the home and the two worked on the renovations while still living in the city.
Mr. Whited said his parents were “big do-it-yourselfers.” But for Mr. Bloys, “I had never done any work like this. I learned how to paint walls and trim.”
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It wasn’t long before the two were ready for their next project. In July 2017, Mr. Bloys bought a late 1870s townhouse in the Washington neighborhood Logan Circle, which the two renovated and subsequently moved into in February 2019.
“We build things together,” Mr. Bloys said. “That’s kind of our love language.”
“If you have a solid foundation you can’t shake the rest,” he added, inspired by the lyrics of their wedding’s first dance song, Maren Morris’s “The Bones,” which said: “The house don’t fall when the bones are good.”
Mr. Bloys remains a resident of Washington, D.C., and Mr. Whited is a resident of Washington, Va., where he was elected mayor in November 2022.
Mr. Whited proposed to Mr. Bloys while on vacation in Sag Harbor, N.Y., in July 2023. After dinner at the American Hotel, the waiter brought a tray with a red Cartier envelope hidden under a dinner napkin. Inside was a fully restored Cartier tank watch from the 1970s.
Mr. Bloys thought it was just an anniversary gift. “I didn’t get you anything,” he recalled saying to Mr. Whited. “He was like, ‘It’s not really that’ and I said, ‘Then what is it?’”
“After 11 years, I think it’s about time to get on with things,” Mr. Whited recalled saying.
The two were married on June 6 at the Old Chapel at Central Moravian Church in Bethlehem, Pa., by the Rev. Elizabeth Keeler, the rector of Trinity Episcopal Church in Washington, Va.
A luncheon followed at Weyhill Guest House at Saucon Valley Country Club with 47 people. The next night, the couple hosted a black-tie celebration in the ballroom of Saucon Valley Country Club with 133 guests.
The couple chose to “spread it out to be really present,” Mr. Bloys said. Besides, he added, “I didn’t want to cry in front of so many people.”
But as the couple toasted one another and their guests that Saturday night, “There was not a dry eye in the room,” Mr. Bloys said. “My plan was foiled.”
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