Lucas Quinn Bladen describes January 2017 as “a chaotic time.” He was a sophomore at the University of Connecticut, who had just returned to campus in Storrs, Conn., from a semester abroad in Paris. His mother had died of breast cancer two months before.
Then, in a class called Theories of Human Rights, he heard Megan Elise Handau’s voluble laugh. He instantly wanted to meet her.
“There really was something about her right away, this really powerful presence that I felt,” Bladen said, “a confidence and an ease and an intelligence.”
Initial attempts to connect with Handau were unsuccessful. He had hoped, for example, to strike up a conversation and asked her one day after class if she knew what the homework assignment was. She quickly replied that she didn’t, then returned to a conversation with friends.
Handau said she didn’t recall that question, but that she had noticed him in that class and in a class they had together on feminist theory. She thought he was cute, but he sat in the back of the class; she was at the very front.
Toward the end of the semester, a mutual friend coincidentally invited them both to a final exam study group, where the two talked more than studied.
They learned they would both be in Washington that summer for legislative internships — she for former Representative Elizabeth H. Esty, Democrat of Connecticut, and he for Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat also from Connecticut. They met for lunch at the Longworth House Office Building cafeteria, a popular eatery for Capitol Hill staff, in June 2017, though neither considers it their first date.
“Megan thought I was networking her,” Bladen said.
The pair maintained contact by texting extensively, ultimately planning a date for late August 2017 when they would be back on campus before the school year started.
“I was super excited and then the day-of, I was really, really nervous,” Handau said. As the president of the Alpha Xi chapter of the Alpha Epsilon Phi sorority, she was leading member recruitment and it had made her lose her voice.
She kept the date anyway. They went to the Dairy Bar, a popular ice cream shop on the UConn campus. He ordered Rocky Road ice cream and she got chocolate. They sat outside at a picnic table and talked for more than four hours. They had their first kiss as the sun set.
“I remember coming back from the first date and trying to appear really chill,” Bladen said. But he was excited. Handau was, too.
“I think he immediately sort of understood something about me, that I was very ambitious and confident,” she said. “I was immediately very struck by that.”
Handau, 29, grew up in New Fairfield, Conn., and graduated from the University of Connecticut with a bachelor’s degree in women’s, gender and sexuality studies and political science. She holds a law degree from Yale, and works as a clerk to Judge Alvin W. Thompson of Federal District Court in Hartford, Conn.
Bladen, 28, who is from Mansfield, Conn., is the major gift officer at the Lawyers for Good Government, a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting human rights and providing equal justice under law. He holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Connecticut.
In January 2019, the couple moved together to a studio apartment in Washington. Handau was a legislative correspondent for Representative Jahana Hayes and Bladen worked as an associate at the Conrad Group, a political fund-raising firm.
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“That was our first big relationship step,” Handau said.
The topic of marriage came up from time to time but remained somewhat nebulous. Bladen, raised by two women who didn’t marry until 2009 (gay marriage was legalized in Connecticut in 2008), said he did not grow up thinking about marriage the way his peers did. And law school, Handau said, is “famously a hard time for relationships.” Through the difficulties, she said Bladen was supportive, generous and kind.
In July 2023, their best friends’ wedding prompted the couple to have a serious talk about engagement. In August 2024, after a dinner at the Griswold Inn in Essex, Conn., Bladen proposed by the water at the Essex Town Green at sunset.
The couple, who live in New Haven, Conn., were married Sept. 26 by Brian Steele, a friend who was ordained by the Universal Life Church for the occasion, at the Jonathan Edwards Winery in North Stonington, Conn., before 92 guests. They had planned to be outdoors under a tent, but an unexpected nor’easter forced the celebrations inside to the winery’s barrel room.
The weather wasn’t the only surprise. During her speech, Handau’s mother revealed that her daughter was the exact same age she was when she got married: 29 years, eight months and 25 days, a detail the couple was unaware of until then. Handau said hearing that instantly soothed any lingering stress about the weather or the last-minute change of plans.
“When she said that, I was like, there’s a larger plan,” she said.
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