Rachel Ross Friedman and Dr. Nathaniel Casselman Lawson were married Sept. 19 after filing their notarized marriage certificate with Jefferson County Probate Court in Birmingham, Ala. On Sept. 21, the couple had a Jewish ceremony at the Club, a private social space in Birmingham. Jenna Shaw, a cousin of the groom and a rabbinical student at Hebrew College in Newton, Mass., led the ceremony, with Judge Sharon L. Blackburn of the Federal District Court in Birmingham, for whom the bride served as a law clerk from 2010-11, leading the couple through their vows.
Ms. Friedman, 34, is a financial services litigation partner in Burr & Forman, a Birmingham law firm. She graduated magna cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania and received a law degree from Vanderbilt.
She is a daughter of Linda A. Friedman and Douglas I. Friedman of Homewood, Ala. The bride’s father is the founder of Friedman Law Firm, which is in Birmingham. The bride’s mother is a partner in Bradley Arant Boult Cummings, another Birmingham law firm.
Dr. Lawson, 35, is the director of the biomaterials division and an assistant professor of clinical and community sciences at the University of Alabama at Birmingham school of dentistry. He graduated summa cum laude from Tulane, and received a dental medicine degree and a doctoral degree in biomedical engineering from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He is a member of the American Dental Association’s scientific affairs council, which oversees research and endorsements, and is in Chicago.
He is a son of Pamela N. Lawson and Thomas J. Lawson of West Chester, Ohio. The groom’s mother retired as a nuclear-medicine technician at Community Hospital in Munster, Ind. His father, a civil engineer, is the research and development manager at ClarkDietrich Building Systems, a manufacturer in West Chester of steel used in construction projects.
The couple met in 2014 through an organization in Birmingham for young Jewish professionals, and when she asked him to car pool to the group’s annual “friendsgiving” potluck, he was sure she was interested in him. “I barely knew him!” she said, stressing that she had made the offer because it seemed a convenience.
A few days later, he made dinner for her, and when he told her he planned to have a turkey sandwich from a fast-food place for the actual Thanksgiving holiday, she invited him to spend it with her family instead. “After that, he started calling me more,” she said, and soon they were the couple that she’d told her family they were not.
