Meron Paulos and Adam Eyuel Aberra were married Sept. 1 at the Cosmos Club, a private social club in Washington. Tim Mulosmanaj, a friend of the couple who became a Universal Life minister for the event, officiated.
The bride, 34, is a foreign service officer with the State Department and is currently on post at the United States embassy in Kingston, Jamaica. She graduated from Bowdoin College and has a Master of International Affairs from Columbia, as well as a Master of Public Affairs from Sciences Po in Paris.
She is a daughter of Almaz Mamo of Brookline, Mass., and the late Paulos Essayas. The bride’s father served as the managing principal of Mitchell Cotts, a shipping, freight forwarding and transport business in East Africa.
The groom, who is 40 and works in Lorton, Va., and Amsterdam is general counsel and chief legal officer of Five Guys International, the restaurant chain. He graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, from which he also received a law degree, both with honors.
He is the son of Mimi Haile of Wilmington, N.C., and Dr. Aberra W. Meshesha of Virginia Beach. The groom’s mother retired as the director of residence life at Johnson C. Smith University. His father is a professor of public administration at Norfolk State University, where he also serves as chair of the political science department.
After initially getting to know each other through Facebook, the couple met for the first time in person in 2012 at a hotel bar in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
