The first date Jai Lidell Lennard went on from Tinder turned out to be his last.
In April 2015, he was struggling to find people on the dating app who were in his area — Williamsburg, Brooklyn — when he matched with Alelli Tanghal. They met for a drink at St. Mazie Bar & Supper Club near his apartment.
Ms. Tanghal, who said she was a “workaholic” at the time, agreed to meet because the bar was near her office.
“I was always working super late,” said Ms. Tanghal, who was employed at a design studio at the time. “Without assistance from an algorithm, I wouldn’t have met Jai.”
The two immediately bonded over their shared love of the films “Punch-Drunk Love” by Paul Thomas Anderson and “Melancholia” by Lars von Trier.
“I thought she was super down-to-earth,” Mr. Lennard said. “It was like hanging out with one of my buds.”
When the conversation moved on to another shared passion — ramen — they decided to follow drinks with dinner at Samurai Mama, the nearest restaurant that offered the closest thing: udon noodles.
A week or two later, Mr. Lennard and Ms. Tanghal met for a second date at the Brooklyn Museum. They were getting along so well that Mr. Lennard invited Ms. Tanghal to a birthday party he was headed to that evening.
“We spent the rest of the night together, and she met some of my closest friends,” he said. “After that, things moved fast.” They moved in together that fall.
Mr. Lennard, 41, was born and raised in San Jose, Calif. He has a bachelor’s degree in photography from the School of Visual Arts in New York and works as a photographer with a focus on the entertainment industry. His clients include The Hollywood Reporter, Billboard, Hulu, Warby Parker and The New York Times.
Ms. Tanghal, 40, who was born in Edison, N.J., and grew up in Central and South New Jersey, also graduated from the School of Visual Arts, though with a bachelor’s degree in illustration and fine arts (and the two never crossed paths). She works as a freelance creative art director.
Early on, Ms. Tanghal realized that the relationship with Mr. Lennard had serious potential. She was on her way home from work when she and Mr. Lennard began arguing over text.
“It was raining out,” Ms. Tanghal said. “And even though we were fighting, he was waiting at the train station with an umbrella.”
She realized he would be there even if things were tough.
From the start, the couple traveled often. At first, they mostly drove to upstate New York and Long Island, but eventually, they expanded farther afield to places like Mexico City, Berlin and Paris.
“I didn’t grow up traveling a lot,” Ms. Tanghal said. “It wasn’t affordable for us. He understood that was something I really wanted to do and always tried to prioritize that. He does all the planning.”
“I’m the administration,” Mr. Lennard said. “I get us there, but she’s picking food and making sure we’re doing fun things.”
Their compatibility extended into the professional arena as well. Over the years, they’ve brought each other on to various projects, including for clients like Converse and Billboard.
“We don’t step on each other’s toes,” Mr. Lennard said. “We do our separate roles together pretty well.”
Ms. Tanghal said she appreciated how supportive Mr. Lennard has been of her career.
“Jai was always getting me to ask for more money,” she said.
The pandemic brought them closer than ever. Mr. Lennard introduced Ms. Tanghal to the TV series “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” one of his favorites, and together, they discovered the German TV show “Dark.”
To track all the show’s characters in the multiverse, they built a large family tree on a foam black board.
“There’s always some type of project that we’re doing,” Mr. Lennard said.
A lot of the projects revolve around hosting friends. When guests come over to their apartment in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, Ms. Tanghal and Mr. Lennard offer them a menu of cocktails. During the pandemic, they invented a “house cocktail” that combines Cointreau, tequila, ginger beer, lime juice, mint and raspberries, and is garnished with fire-roasted ginger. Ms. Tanghal called it “Pandy Candy.”
Ms. Tanghal collects playing cards and enjoys making up games for her and Mr. Lennard’s friends. One of these, called “Bikini Blanco,” utilizes a 1990s Hooters-themed deck of cards that Ms. Tanghal bought on eBay. Players pull cards at random and take a shot whenever a photo of a woman dressed in a white bikini comes up.
“I grew up with my cousin bringing me to Hooters for my birthday because I really love their chicken wings,” Ms. Tanghal said.
Ms. Tanghal knew she wanted to marry Mr. Lennard in 2019, after her childhood best friend died.
“When somebody is sick, you realize who’s going to be there for you and in what type of way,” Ms. Tanghal said. “I realized I was with someone who would be with me through the hard times.”
Mr. Lennard came to a similar conclusion during the first year of the pandemic. He spent six months looking for a ring before giving up and asking Ms. Tanghal to choose from 15 options saved in an image folder. Realizing that she preferred a sapphire to a diamond, Ms. Tanghal asked to pick the ring on her own. Mr. Lennard happily agreed.
“We like different things, and we respect each other’s taste,” Mr. Lennard said.
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He waited a few months, until July 2022, before surprising her with a proposal. During a trip to Garrison, N.Y., he took Ms. Tanghal to Constitution Marsh Audubon Center and Sanctuary, a park by the Hudson River.
“We watched the moon come up, and I turned to her and asked her to marry me,” Mr. Lennard said.
The two were married Jan. 9 at the house of one of Ms. Tanghal’s brothers in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. The brother, Raphael Tanghal, officiated the intimate ceremony. He was previously ordained by American Marriage Ministries.
Then, on Feb. 28, Ms. Tanghal and Mr. Lennard hosted a celebration for 140 guests at the Palacio de Memoria, a prewar mansion in Metro Manila. Raphael Tanghal led the ceremony in the front garden beneath a tall tree draped with a long white cloth.
Ms. Tanghal and Mr. Lennard were inspired to have their celebration in the Philippines, where Ms. Tanghal’s parents are from, after attending the wedding of one of Mr. Lennard’s friends there in 2023.
“She turned over her budget sheet, and I thought, holy crap, we could do an actual wedding and have it be more or less within our price range,” Mr. Lennard said. “We’d always agreed that we wouldn’t do a wedding in New York because it would be so expensive.”
Before the friend’s wedding, Ms. Tanghal hadn’t been to the Philippines since she was 1. Her wedding was the first time she met her father’s side of the family.
“It made me so happy to see my aunties and my uncles beaming and having so much fun,” she said. “They were so happy to be together. It was a big family reunion.”
Ms. Tanghal and Mr. Lennard incorporated various elements of Filipino culture into the wedding, including a traditional ceremony in which two couples they admire placed a veil over their shoulders and wrapped a cord around them in a figure 8. The acts symbolized unity and eternity.
Ms. Tanghal’s aunt also organized a “money dance,” during which the bride and groom wore crowns and sashes that guests pinned dollars and pesos onto while dancing.
The menu reflected local culture, with lechon, a pig slow-roasted on a spit; sisig, a meat hash; and binakol na manok, a chicken soup, among the dishes.
“I’ve never been to a wedding where people cried so much,” Mr. Lennard said.
First, there were Ms. Tanghal’s tears as she wrote her vows the morning of the ceremony. Then she cried when her cousin Emily Lintag-Perkins attached a custom pin to her bouquet with photos of people close to Ms. Tanghal who died: her mother, who died in 2004; her childhood best friend; and her grandmother.
Finally, during dinner, many of the guests were misty-eyed as best friends of the bride and groom gave their speeches.
“We’ve been together for 11 years,” Ms. Tanghal said. “So people really know us.”
On This Day
When Feb. 28, 2026
Where Palacio de Memoria, Metro Manila, the Philippines
Hot Wheels Ms. Tanghal and her father, Romeo Tanghal Sr., rode up to the ceremony in a jeepney, a form of public transport in the Philippines that originated as military jeeps abandoned by U.S. soldiers after World War II. Later, a small fleet of jeepneys delivered guests from the reception to the after-party. “It’s such a classic piece of Philippine history,” Ms. Tanghal said.
Waiter Parade Dozens of waiters carried in the first dinner dish, a chicken soup served in coconut bowls. “It’s a traditional presentation where there’s a waiter for nearly every person, and they surround the tables,” Mr. Lennard said. “It’s a bit of a ballet.”
Extra-Special Goodies For the gift bags, Ms. Tanghal designed a custom deck of playing cards with photos of her and Mr. Lennard. Guests also received a custom bandanna, a fan and a matchbox designed by Ms. Tanghal; and а key chain of a “barrelman,” a popular novelty item in the Philippines. Ms. Tanghal gave Mr. Lennard a barrelman figurine on their third date.
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