Dr. Michelle Thuy Tien Nguyen didn’t let her conscience tug at her in August 2023 when she ghosted Alex Mark Dias on Bumble.
The two hadn’t yet met after a couple of weeks of messaging. “I was like, I don’t owe this person anything,” she said. When he liked her on Hinge the following January, she had to text a friend for advice about how to best reconnect.
Nguyen and Dias, both 33, live in Portland, Ore. When she didn’t respond to Dias’s final Bumble messages, it was because her life felt unruly. She had recently graduated from a medical fellowship and was figuring out her career.
“I was traveling every week for interviews,” she said. “I would come home, quickly do my laundry and be back at the airport.” Her messages with Dias, she acknowledged, were starting to make dating apps seem less of a crapshoot. “It was a very good conversation we were having.” But instead of explaining that she was barely home long enough to go on the date he had proposed, she vanished. Dias, left hanging and dejected, deleted his dating apps. “I thought, ‘I’m done,’” he said.
Nguyen grew up in Beaverton, Ore. She has a bachelor’s degree in human physiology from the University of Oregon and a medical degree from Indiana University School of Medicine.
Dias, a founder of Scratch Digital, a digital marketing company, grew up in Lafayette, Colo. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in business management and marketing from Northern Arizona University.
During the pandemic, while living in San Diego, “I got a little stir crazy,” he said. In December 2020, he and his dog drove up the coast in search of a more outdoorsy lifestyle and found it in Portland.
Finding love there proved more elusive until, out of boredom, he picked up where he left off on his dating apps in January 2024. Around the same time, Nguyen, who had accepted a position at a medical group practice in Portland as a sports medicine physician a month earlier (and still works there today), rejoined Hinge. When Dias saw her profile, “I thought, oh, maybe this is another chance,” he said.
When he liked her profile, she was initially flummoxed. “I asked my friend, ‘What do I do?’” she said. “‘Do I go back on Bumble and message him there?’” Hinge, where she sent him a “Hey, Stranger” response, seemed more forward-looking. Dias had already put the ghosting episode behind him: “The conversation picked up where it had left off pretty quickly,” he said.
In late January, they met for a first date at De Noche, a now-closed Mexican restaurant in Portland. An espresso martini nightcap at the Solo Club, near Nguyen’s apartment, led to a good night kiss.
Food, they discovered early on, was their love language. In February 2024, on their third date, Dias picked up a pint of Nguyen’s favorite flavor, olive oil, from her favorite ice cream shop, Salt & Straw in Portland, before making her a ravioli dinner at his place. By dessert, both were melting into a new romance. By spring, they were dating exclusively.
At the end of 2024, when Dias’s lease ran out, he moved into Nguyen’s apartment, a 10-minute walk away. The following June, he proposed on a picnic at Marylhurst Heights Park in West Linn, Ore.
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Dias is part Portuguese; Nguyen’s family is Vietnamese. Once they were engaged, they pieced together a way to celebrate both cultures. On May 2, they had a traditional Vietnamese tea ceremony at Nguyen’s childhood home in Beaverton, and earlier that day, they were legally married at Salt & Straw. (They plan to host 55 guests for a celebration in Porto, Portugal, on June 25.)
Late last year, the ice cream shop had posted a “Calling All Lovebirds” story on Instagram in hopes of selecting a couple besotted enough with the brand to want to marry amid scoopers and freezers. Nguyen and Dias won the contest by filling out a form detailing the role each month’s new flavor played in solidifying their love. “It’s the shop we went to post-proposal to celebrate,” they added.
“We were thinking, let’s just go to the courthouse,” Nguyen said. The Salt & Straw wedding proved way less perfunctory. The officiant was Tyler Malek, the shop’s head ice cream maker, who was ordained by American Marriage Ministries for this event. Nguyen, clutching a waffle cone-wrapped wedding bouquet, walked down an aisle to “Can’t Help Falling in Love” as 40 guests, standing around ice cream tables, awaited their “I do’s.”
After the ceremony, the crew presented a custom two-tiered ice cream cake made with Strawberry Tres Leches, a mutually beloved flavor. All morning, guests had been treated to free scoops while the couple — she in a tailored chiffon wedding dress and he in a dark green suit from Vietnam — manned a waffle maker.
“That was a highlight,” Nguyen said, adding that the shop will continue to be a cherished spot for the couple. “Salt & Straw is really the reason I moved to the neighborhood.”
The post The Sweetest Ceremony — at Their Favorite Ice Cream Shop appeared first on New York Times.
