The Rev. Emily Jo Garcia and Omar Ali De Paolis were married Sept. 21 at the Church of the Redeemer in Chestnut Hill, Mass. The Rt. Rev. Alan M. Gates, an Episcopal bishop, performed the ceremony.
The bride, 31, is an Episcopal priest and serves at the Church of the Redeemer as its priest for children, teens and families. She graduated from Princeton and received a master’s degree in divinity from Yale.
She is a daughter of Ann M. Garcia and Ron A. Garcia of Loveland, Colo. The bride’s father works in the lumber department of a Home Depot in Loveland, and also organizes the children’s workshops there. Her mother, who works in Fort Collins, Colo., is a 911 dispatcher for the Larimer County Sheriff’s Department. The bride’s parents were previously missionaries in Tokyo.
The groom, 36, is a principal associate scientist at Sigilon Therapeutics in Cambridge, Mass. He graduated from the University of Massachusetts at Boston and received a master’s degree in chemistry from Boston College.
He is the son of Binti Hagi De Paolis of Rome and the late Vittorio De Paolis, who also lived in Rome. The groom’s mother, who is retired, served as a diplomat for the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Somalia, Egypt, Boston and Ethiopia.
The couple met in July 2017 on the dating app Coffee Meets Bagel and soon discovered that they both lived in Boston, less than a mile from each other. In some ways, they were even closer. “We are both people of strong Christian faith who believe in family values,” said Mr. De Paolis, who is Roman Catholic.
On their first date, while sharing ice cream on the Boston Common, they talked for six hours about everything from pastry to science and theology.
“He was so beautiful and warm and caring and had a very playful sense of humor,” Ms. Garcia said. “But he also had an extremely sharp, inquiring mind.”
She texted him after the date. “I wish you had kissed me!” she wrote.
Mr. De Paolis, stopping on his walk home, replied, “I wish I had too! I was trying to be cautious!”
Ms. Garcia said she felt “uncertain” as to her future with Mr. De Paolis. “Most of the men I dated had trouble dealing with the fact that I was studying to become a priest,” she said. “They couldn’t understand how I could be so devout and yet still love to go out dancing.”
At the start of their second date, he wasted no time, greeting Ms. Garcia with a very passionate kiss.
As far as Ms. Garcia was concerned, it was all in the stars. “He’s a Taurus, always so peaceable and ready to enjoy the world, and I’m a Scorpio, often brooding and thinking of dark things,” she said. “As opposites attract, we are the best examples of our astrological signs.”
In December 2017, Ms. Garcia was ordained to the priesthood at Church of the Redeemer, and Mr. De Paolis spent countless hours with her family, who had flown out from Colorado. “He fit right in,” Ms. Garcia said.
They continued dating and in time, he came to love her more than he loved the periodic table of elements. “I look at her as fluorine, which is a highly reactive element,” Mr. De Paolis said. “I look at myself as argon, a gas which is the exact opposite, it doesn’t react with anything.”
That same month, Mr. De Paolis sent his mother a picture of him and Ms. Garcia in front of the altar at Christmas, to which his mother replied: “I’m glad you found a little angel standing next to you.”
By February 2018, Ms. Garcia knew she wanted to marry Mr. De Paolis and began telling friends. She whispered as much to Mr. De Paolis during breakfast one morning, watching as he dipped a tiny piece of pancake into a mound of Nutella. “I want that too,” he whispered back.
They were engaged in London on July 13 and July 14, 2018, as each took a day to propose to the other. Ms. Garcia popped the question while standing in front of the Rosetta Stone at the British Museum, and when Mr. De Paolis said yes, they embraced before an audience of stone pharaohs and museum guards. The next day, Mr. De Paolis carried out his proposal in the Rose Garden at Kew Gardens.
“We feel thoroughly prepared and completely unprepared for what will come next,” Mr. De Paolis said.
