Jessica Lauren Pantzer and Scott Ryan James were married Oct. 27 at the Wagner at the Battery, a hotel in New York. Rabbi Linda Henry Goodman officiated.
The bride, who is 40 and works remotely from Los Angeles, is a vice president, portfolio manager, for CDM New York, a health care advertising agency in New York. She graduated magna cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania.
She is a daughter of Michael K. Pantzer of New York and the late Esther Pantzer. Her father is the executive vice president and chief operating officer of Panco Management, a property management firm based in Rochelle Park, N.J. Her mother was an English-Spanish legal interpreter based in New York.
The groom, who is 41 and also works in Los Angeles, is a line producer of original content programming for the Ultimate Fighting Championship, including 25 documentaries on the history of the U.F.C. He graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
He is a son of Sandra Horowitz James and Mark James of San Diego. The groom’s mother retired as a technical writer in San Diego for Hewlett-Packard. His father, who is also retired, was an information technology adviser at the University of California, San Diego.
After a weeklong flurry of back-and-forth texts, the couple, introduced by mutual friends, went on a first date in May 2017. The date began with Mr. James finding Ms. Pantzer waiting for him outside of her Los Angeles apartment.
Mr. James got out of his car, walked up to Ms. Pantzer and gave her “a sincere hug-hello,” as she put it.
Their first get-together, on a Saturday, lasted 15 hours, as they went on a Hollywood guided tour, then to lunch, then on a hiking excursion, then out for drinks, and finally to an arcade.
The marathon date was sealed with a first kiss.
“It was electric,” Ms. Pantzer said. “For the first time in my life, I didn’t have one negative thing to say about my date.”
When Mr. James asked when Ms. Pantzer could see him again, she replied, “How about Tuesday or Wednesday?”
He said, “How about both?”
The next five months became a dizzying stretch during which the couple moved in together and met each other’s families. Mr. James also asked Ms. Pantzer’s father for his daughter’s hand in marriage.
“From the start, he was so much fun to be with,” Ms. Pantzer said. “He was witty and clever, very intelligent, trustworthy and unbelievably thoughtful.”
“But above all,” she added, “he let me be me.”
On New Year’s Eve 2017, Ms. Pantzer and Mr. James went out for an early dinner and arrived home well before midnight.
Ms. Pantzer was in her pajamas and fading fast when Mr. James asked her if she might join him for a late-night stroll. They eventually found themselves in the exact spot outside Ms. Pantzer’s apartment building where Mr. James had given her that hello-hug, seven months earlier.
Suddenly, Ms. Pantzer got the urge to do some improvisational acting. She decided they would re-enact the first scene of their first date, only this time, they would reverse roles.
In what Ms. Pantzer called the “hug portrayal scene,” she pretended to get out of a car, then walked over to Mr. James and was just about to hug him when he suddenly dropped to one knee, startling her back into real life.
Ring in hand, he turned the improv scene on its head and proposed.
