Every Sunday over the course of six weeks in the fall of 2024, F Michael Haynie took Grace Aki to a different location from “When Harry Met Sally …,” Nora Ephron’s 1989 romantic comedy. Among the places they visited were the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Central Park Boathouse and a stoop on the Upper West Side where a famous scene involving a wagon-wheel coffee table takes place.
“My bedroom as a 13-year-old was covered with a mural of Times Square,” Ms. Aki, 33, said. “I was in love with New York City. It was always where I wanted to be. And I’m obsessed with ‘When Harry Met Sally’ and anything Nora Ephron.” (The film’s director, Rob Reiner, and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, died this week.)
On Nov. 3, Mx. Haynie, 39, who uses they/them pronouns and goes by F, asked Ms. Aki to meet at the Puck Building near SoHo, where the film’s final scene was shot. In homage to Harry Burns, one of the titular characters played by Billy Crystal, Mx. Haynie dressed in a white cable-knit sweater, bluejeans and white Nikes.
Together, Mx. Haynie and Ms. Aki walked to Washington Square Park, a location from the beginning of the film. There, Mx. Haynie proposed to Ms. Aki with a diamond ring that belonged to Ms. Aki’s grandmother.
After Ms. Aki said yes, the two went for espressos at Caffe Reggio, then dinner at their favorite restaurant, Taikun Sushi, on the Lower East Side, and afterward met around 25 friends at the Algonquin Hotel Times Square for a celebration.
Ms. Aki was born and raised in Dalton, Ga. In 2014, a few years after graduating from Dalton High School, Ms. Aki moved to New York City. “I had $48 in my bank account at the time,” she said. During a playwriting workshop, she wrote a solo play about a first-generation Japanese American family similar to hers, called “To Free a Mockingbird.”
In 2024, the play, which Ms. Aki also stars in, had its international premiere at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Ms. Aki works at AKA, an advertising agency, where she is the director of influence marketing and the creative lead for the Arts Insider, AKA’s program for content creators. She is also a host on the podcast “BroadwayRadio,” has her own podcast called “Tell Me On a Sunday” and sells her watercolor paintings on Etsy.
Mx. Haynie was born in Marietta, Ohio, and grew up in Macon, Ga. In 2008, they graduated from N.Y.U. with a bachelor’s degree in theater. They have acted in Broadway shows like “Wicked,” “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and “The Heart of Rock and Roll,” as well as Off-Broadway shows like “Dogfight” and the “Carrie” revival.
When Mx. Haynie first moved to New York in 2004, they busked with their guitar in Washington Square Park on weekends. Since then, they have performed as a singer-songwriter at venues like The Bitter End, Joe’s Pub, Sullivan Hall and the Cutting Room.
Mx. Haynie chose “When Harry Met Sally” as a theme for the proposal because of Ms. Aki’s love of the film, but also because there are some parallels between the movie — a slow-burn, enemies-to-friends-to-lovers romance — and their relationship.
Similar to Harry Burns and Sally Albright, played by Meg Ryan, Ms. Aki and Mx. Haynie had a rocky start, then became friends and, after nearly a year, confessed their love.
In August 2019, Mx. Haynie approached Ms. Aki, they had thought for the first time, after watching her perform during a workshop at Second Stage Theater.
“She was like, ‘We’ve met at concerts in the city,’” Mx. Haynie said. “I felt so stupid and embarrassed, I ran away immediately.”
Despite the awkward exchange, the two began building a casual friendship that deepened during the pandemic.
In early 2020, Mx. Haynie was in Portland, Ore., playing Olaf in the Broadway National Tour of “Frozen,” when Covid forced theaters to shut down.
“We couldn’t work,” Ms. Aki said. “All we had was connecting.”
“We were sharing our favorite artists, writers, watching series together,” Mx. Haynie said. “Any art I made, I immediately wanted to share with Grace, and she would send me her art. A beautiful pen-and-ink sketch, or a watercolor. I was like, ‘Why are you good at so many different things?’”
In the spring of 2020, Mx. Haynie sent Ms. Aki a song they were writing for a contest, with lyrics such as: “There you are/closer than you’ve ever been/a satellite just sent you down into my arms/There you are/you took my breath away from me/those eyes and that familiar smile/it’s been a while since I saw the day that I felt this way in my heart.”
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“I didn’t realize it was so obviously saying, I’m in love with you,” Mx. Haynie said.
Still, both were too nervous to acknowledge their feelings.
In May 2020, Ms. Aki told Mx. Haynie that she wanted to go to Dalton to see her family, and Mx. Haynie offered to pick her up “on the way,” she said. That meant driving from Portland, Ore., to Hoboken, N.J., and then to Georgia.
When Mx. Haynie dropped Ms. Aki off in Dalton, they met her parents, who, Ms. Aki said, “were thrilled I was friends with someone so compassionate who was also a fellow Georgian.”
Mx. Haynie told Ms. Aki they loved her in late spring of 2021.
“When I said it, Grace looks at me and goes, ‘Why did you wait so long?’” Mx. Haynie said.
Soon after they began dating, Disney Theatrical Productions decided to relaunch the “Frozen” tour and asked Mx. Haynie to rejoin in the Olaf role. After being unemployed for 18 months, Mx. Haynie said they had to take the opportunity, even though it meant leaving New York.
“I told this woman I love, ‘I’m going to be away for a year,’” Mx. Haynie said.
After the tour started in September 2021, Ms. Aki traveled around the country to catch performances of “Frozen” in cities like Chicago, Minneapolis, Orlando and Atlanta, where her and Mx. Haynie’s families also joined the audience.
Around the time the two started dating, Mx. Haynie came out as nonbinary. Ms. Aki’s support through the experience was “a beautiful thing,” they said.
“I was out on the road with a big Disney show, we’re wearing masks, and Olaf is played by a nonbinary actor,” they added. “It was incredible and super scary. Having a partner who supported me in that was a great thing. I understood love in a different way than I ever have before.”
The couple were married by Yanfang Chen, an officiant at the Manhattan City Clerk’s office, on Nov. 10, with their parents and Ms. Aki’s sibling in attendance.
After a pit stop at Smiley Coffee on Ludlow Street, they went to the Cutting Room, a live music venue on East 32nd Street, to set up for their celebration.
They’d chosen to do it on a Monday on purpose.
“That’s when theater folks are available,” Ms. Aki said.
For the wedding “merch,” Ms. Aki designed sweatshirts and hats with “Monday in Manhattan” written across them, along with a drawing of a hot dog and a martini, two things the couple feels New York does well.
While Ms. Aki and a few of her friends prepared the venue, arranging table settings, as well as hot dogs, pastrami sandwiches and pickles from Katz’s Delicatessen, Mx. Haynie rehearsed.
What most of the 100 guests didn’t know was that they were in for a surprise show.
At 6 p.m., it opened with a standup routine by their friend Joey Dardano, who performed at the New York City Comedy Festival two days later. During the next hour and a half, friends sang songs that had special meaning to the couple. Performers included Justin Sargent, from Broadway shows like “Hamilton” and “Rock of Ages,” and Caroline Bowman, who was Elsa on the “Frozen” tour and has performed in Broadway shows like “Smash” and “Wicked.”
“I like weddings that are entertaining and have a through line,” Ms. Aki said. “We kind of wrote a short musical of our love.”
At the end, during the instrumental break on the song “Kill the Lights” — sung by Alex Newell, who is currently starring in Broadway’s “Chicago” — Mx. Haynie and Ms. Aki said their vows. Alex Brightman, a two-time Tony nominee and voice actor on the animated show “Hazbin Hotel,” led the ceremony.
What followed was a kiss, the use of a bubble machine and a two-hour dance party.
Later in the evening, Ms. Aki and Mx. Haynie took a getaway car that was used in “When Harry Met Sally” to the Algonquin Hotel Times Square for an after-party.
“The ‘Frozen’ cast sang ‘Let It Go,’ and I housed a medium-rare steak in a corner,” Ms. Aki said. “We had the time of our lives.”
On This Day
Where The Cutting Room, New York City
When Nov. 10, 2025
Frugal and Fun “I wanted the table settings to be fun and stuff for people to enjoy,” Ms. Aki said. So she bought simple aluminum trays and filled them with candy cigarettes, Hopjes coffee candies, Pixy Stix and vintage noise makers from the 1960s. She left a note for each guest, handwritten on guest checks like the ones often used at diners.
’Zines Instead of Programs Ms. Aki made ’zines for the guests that featured a movie poster she designed for the day; photos of her and Mx. Haynie in marching band; their picks on Letterboxd, a film-reviewing social platform; and photos of their cat. Ms. Aki also included pages dedicated to her father and stepfather, both of whom died.
Oh, Snap Rather than making a website, Ms. Aki and Mx. Haynie created an Instagram account for the wedding. Then, they asked a stranger to take а photo of them with a disposable camera, reprinted that as save-the-dates and wrote the Instagram handle on the back of each one in Sharpie. “We were able to put things on the Stories and to have countdowns, make little videos and storyboards,” Ms. Aki said.
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