Joshua Benjamin Sudman’s proposal to Julian Ernest Wright was unplanned and delivered without fanfare on Aug. 13, 2023, in Los Angeles.
The two were standing outside the hospital where Mr. Sudman’s mother, Sheryl Sudman, spent the last days of her life after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer that June.
“I said something like, ‘Hey, will you marry me?’” Mr. Sudman recalled. “There was a part of me that needed to be able to tell my mom it was happening.”
He added, “She used to call us her sons, her boys.”
Mr. Wright said the moment “felt like one of those true, ‘in sickness and in health’ things.” His answer was yes.
Mr. Wright, 30, was born in Atlanta and grew up in Louisville, Ky. He graduated from Columbia, where he and Mr. Sudman met, with a bachelor’s degree in American Studies, and currently works as a director at Be Clear, a strategic communications firm.
Mr. Sudman, 30, was born in San Luis Obispo, Calif., and grew up in Tarzana and Camarillo, Calif. He earned a bachelor’s in economics and political science from Columbia and works as the senior director of treasury at Nonprofit Finance Fund in New York.
Mr. Sudman and Mr. Wright met in June 2016, the summer before their senior year at Columbia. They hit it off immediately and formed an indie rock/pop band called Holy Ride with two other musicians.
“The four of us became best friends,” said Mr. Sudman, who played guitar. Mr. Wright was the singer and songwriter. For years, they wrestled with feelings for each other, unsure of whether to remain friends or become something more.
After graduating in May 2017, the two decided to share an apartment on West 193rd Street as platonic friends and roommates. “There was a lot of tension,” Mr. Sudman said. “We were trying to figure out ourselves and our lives and our jobs.”
Mr. Sudman ultimately concluded that “it came down to the fact that I was in love with him, and I couldn’t fully admit it.”
The heightened emotions spilled over into their band dynamics.
“We definitely relished the tumultuous argue-at-rehearsal-and-before-the-show-and-then-make-up-at-the-show thing,” Mr. Wright said. “It was good fuel for the emotions you need to write good songs and make good music.”
At the end of March 2018, a long weekend at Gurney’s Montauk Resort & Seawater Spa in the Hamptons created a romantic shift in their relationship.
“Afterward, there was no argument,” Mr. Sudman said. “That’s all we’d had to do for months and months.”
The band broke up in 2018, but the couple remained together. A year and a half later, they adopted a cat named Arthur. During several months in 2020, each of them changed jobs, and together, they moved into a new apartment.
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“We spent basically all of our 20s together,” Mr. Sudman said. “We grew up together.”
In September 2023, about a month after Mr. Sudman’s mother died, Mr. Wright and Mr. Sudman spent three weeks taking care of Mr. Wright’s father, Ernest J. Wright III, who has autoimmune encephalitis-caused dementia, in New York.
“That was the summer when we became the parents to our parents,” Mr. Wright said. “We had grown up. We were not the same people we were when the year started.”
Mr. Sudman said that though those months were incredibly difficult, “there was a lot of growth.”
On Dec. 25, Mr. Sudman and Mr. Wright had lunch with Mr. Sudman’s father, Michael Sudman, his sister, Lindsay Sudman, and her partner, Luis Ortiz, at Blue Willow, a Chinese restaurant in Midtown Manhattan.
“That restaurant is where we had our last Christmas lunch with my mother in 2022,” Mr. Sudman said.
In the afternoon, the five of them headed to an overlook on Governors Island, where Ms. Sudman, who was ordained as a one-day officiant by the New York City Clerk, led a short wedding ceremony.
Mr. Wright and Mr. Sudman chose Christmas Day in part as a nod to Mr. Sudman’s parents, who were married on the Fourth of July in 1994. “It felt like a meaningful way to honor their relationship without stealing their anniversary,” Mr. Wright said.
Afterward, the group went to QC Spa New York on the island, then ate dinner at Lounge on Pearl at the Wall Street Hotel.
“We didn’t want it to be this expensive thing that we would always think of as the pinnacle of our love together,” Mr. Wright said. “Every day together is fun and magical.”
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