Francesca Aurora Carington had it in the back of her mind that she might return to London when she matched with Sean Patrick Maloney in August 2023. She had grown up there, and her family lived in Bledlow, a nearby village.
Carington “was sort of looking for a relationship,” she said, when she joined Hinge. “I knew that’s what I wanted long term.” At the time, she was renting an apartment in Brooklyn Heights and working as a copy editor for The Guardian U.S. in New York.
Maloney had been on Hinge for six months and said he was “on the verge of giving up the hope of finding someone” when they matched. “I was in Buffalo visiting my family and promised myself I would delete Hinge if I didn’t match with someone by the time I came back to the city,” he said. He lived in Brooklyn’s Bushwick neighborhood and was then an assistant on the credit sales desk in the New York office of Citigroup.
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When the two met for drinks at Doris, a bar in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, sparks flew.
“I thought she was very attractive and was taken in by her British accent,” Maloney said.
“The thing that struck me about him straight away was his smile,” she said. “I loved how it crinkled up his eyes.”
They sat on benches in the bar’s back garden. Carington, who also worked as a freelance writer, told him about her journalism background and how she had recently interviewed Naomi Watts for a Tatler magazine cover story. “I was very impressed,” Maloney said.
The mention of Watts led to a discussion of their shared admiration for the filmmaker David Lynch, who cast the actress in his movie “Mulholland Drive.”
They talked until the bar closed, but before parting, Maloney asked her out again.
A few days later, they had dinner at Mao Mao, a Thai restaurant in Bushwick. Over spicy pork larb and Thai beer, Carington told Maloney about the charms of Bledlow, where she had spent part of her childhood. “She told me about the historic church she wanted to get married in someday,” Maloney said. “It was so refreshing and sweet.”
After listening to music at Ornithology Jazz Club for a few hours, they walked outside and shared a passionate kiss on the sidewalk, eventually falling into an embrace.
They started texting daily and met up several times a week, planning what Carington called “fun and silly dates.” They cycled to Coney Island from Brooklyn Heights, hit Dave & Buster’s near Downtown Brooklyn to play arcade games and bought hot dogs at the San Gennaro Festival in Little Italy.
“It got so serious so fast,” Maloney said. “I knew after a few dates I would do anything to spend the rest of my life with Francesca.”
Carington, 33, grew up in London’s Chelsea neighborhood and then Bledlow, England. She is a homepage editor for The Guardian in London and is also a freelance writer covering arts and culture for publications like the Financial Times and Tatler. She holds a bachelor’s degree in German from the University of Oxford and a master’s in journalism from Columbia.
Maloney, 35, is from Buffalo, N.Y. He is a vice president in client facilitation in the London office of Citigroup. He has a bachelor’s in economics from Buffalo State College, now Buffalo State University.
While they both said that they were “deep in love,” the question of Carington moving to London loomed over their relationship.
“We were at a bar watching a Bills game when I asked Francesca if she saw her future in London,” Maloney said. “When she said yes, I knew mine had to be, too.”
He went to London in December 2023 to begin the process of finding a job in Citigroup’s office there. In the year that followed, the couple shuttled between each other’s New York apartments.
Finally, in January 2025, Maloney found his current job, and they solidified their plans to relocate. That May, the couple moved into a home in North London, where they still live.
A few months later, in November, during a visit to see Carington’s parents in Bledlow, Maloney led her outside to the garden at their home. There, in front of a gorilla sculpture she had played on as a child, he dropped to one knee and proposed with an antique ruby ring.
They married Sept. 19 before 175 guests at Holy Trinity Church in Bledlow, the historic church she dreamed of marrying in. Right Reverend Lord Chartres, a retired senior bishop from the Church of England, officiated. Carington wore a floral headpiece that her paternal grandmother, Lady Iona Carrington, wore at her wedding in 1942.
The newlyweds hosted their reception in the Bledlow garden where they became engaged. The cocktail hour included a station serving fried chicken and hot dogs as a nod to Maloney’s American roots, and a country band played after dinner.
The post A Return to England and the Church Where She Wanted to Marry appeared first on New York Times.
