In her 20’s, Dr. Carmelle Tsai thought she might spend her life as an unmarried physician and create a family out of the children and communities she served around the world. However, her real hope was that she would find a partner, specifically someone tall, lanky, athletic, at least a little bit nerdy (she describes herself as very nerdy) and Christian. “He needed to be a man who loved Jesus with all his heart,” she said.
Dr. Tsai, 33, is a pediatric emergency medicine and global health fellow at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. She spends part of her time working in the hospital and the other part as a traveling physician helping vulnerable children in Africa and India, among other places, with a particular interest in victims of trafficking. From jet lag to seeing children with serious illnesses, nothing seems to dim her ebullient personality. “I feel like being in the E.R. is a box of chocolates,” she said. “You just don’t know what you’re going to get.”
In May 2017, she was texting with Dr. Rachel Davis, a friend and fellow physician who is also interested in global health. “I’m pretty sure I was in Tanzania at the time and Carmelle had just returned from Laos,” Dr. Davis said. Dr. Tsai had mentioned that she wished she had a boyfriend to pick her up at the airport, and maybe also to walk her adopted dog, Dash, when she traveled. “Well, I only have one single Christian guy friend left,” Dr. Davis texted back.
This was Dr. Bradley Wallace, who is 33 and a chief general surgery resident at the University of Colorado in Denver. He grew up in Houston, and he is so tall he tends to bow his head slightly. “He’s nerdy,” Dr. Tsai wrote in an email. “He loves Star Wars and he used to do computer modeling of supernovas.”
By the time he got in touch with her, at the urging of Dr. Davis, she was on her way to Zambia for work. So, they began communicating via texts, emails and Facebook. They discussed their favorite books (the “Harry Potter” series for her, “Lord of the Rings” for him). “We talked about theology, our faith, our backgrounds, our love for medicine and silly things like, ‘What’s your Chipotle order?’” said Dr. Tsai, who grew up in Irvine, Calif.
They compared their bucket lists. “I told him I wanted a kiss at the Eiffel Tower and I wanted to be on ‘The Amazing Race,’” she said. He said he wanted to go skydiving and kiss in the rain. They also described their deal breakers when it came to relationships. “I couldn’t be with someone who wouldn’t consider adopting,” she said. “I am not sure I want biological children, but I’m very interested in adopting. I just think there are so many children in the world who need loving homes, or just need a home.” He said he couldn’t be with someone who wasn’t “God-focused” and “others-focused.’”
Friends say both are genuinely altruistic, but not in a holier-than-thou way. In Philadelphia, she always carries restaurant gift cards to give to people on the street who look like they could use one. Dr. Wallace celebrates his birthdays by doing acts of kindness (30 acts of kindness for his 30th birthday, for example). This might include picking up trash (dog excrement included) on the sidewalk, dropping candy off at a hospital, or corralling all the abandoned grocery carts outside a supermarket.
“If there’s a theme about Bradley, it’s, ‘My job in life is to take care of other people,’” said Dr. Isaac Hernandez, his former roommate at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School. “I used to tell him, ‘Take some time for yourself!’ I was never successful in convincing him to do that.’”
In July 2017, Dr. Tsai happened to be in Denver so she and Dr. Wallace made a plan to see Switchfoot, a Christian rock band. Dr. Wallace thought she was “straight up gorgeous and way out of my league.” He added, “When we were first talking on the phone, we were staying up all night, food getting cold. That same giddiness was there when we met for the first time.”
Still, she returned home wondering if they would ever become more than friends. She later learned that Dr. Wallace prayed and fasted after she left, as a way of clarifying his feelings for her and deciding whether to commit to a relationship.
When she visited him again in February 2018, it was obvious he no longer saw her as just a friend. He picked her up at the airport with a rose and had organized an elaborate reverse date that began with dessert, rewound to dinner and ended with a kiss. “I will say, it was the best first kiss I’ve ever had because it came with this history of us having this beautiful time of getting to know each other,” she said. “We’d spent months and months writing to each other.”
They established boundaries from the beginning. “We are Christians and don’t believe in staying together or consummating our relationship,” she said. They agreed to draw the line at kissing. If he visited her in Philadelphia, or she visited him in Denver, they did not spend the night at each other’s apartments, not even on the couch. “You know how they say it takes a village?” she said. “We had a wonderful community of friends who allowed us to crash at their places.”
These days, when Dr. Tsai travels to Denver to see Dr. Wallace, he always picks her up at the airport and always with a rose. On their FaceTime dates, he attempts to create the illusion that they are in the same place at the same time, although they rarely are. “He even tries to buy the same food that I’m having so we can pretend we are eating together,” she wrote in an email. She describes him as the ideal surgeon (and boyfriend), someone who is “compassionate and kind, but strong and reliable.”
He described falling in love with her this way: “For me, it was a thousand little things. Somewhere along the way, we became the best of friends.”
In June 2019, she attended a training in international child rights in Geneva and scheduled a few days in Paris afterward. At the time, he was in Hangzhou, China finishing an exchange program for medical residents and about to head home to Denver. He quickly changed his plans and flew to Paris instead, without telling Dr. Tsai.
When she landed in Paris, on July 1, she found a text from him that read: “Today’s goodbye, tomorrow’s hello. It’s a clue from ‘The Amazing Race’ I’ve set up for you!” Dr. Tsai figured he’d set up a mini-Amazing Race for her, just for fun and from afar. The answer to the clue was “Aloha,” a reference to the Hostel Aloha where she was staying. When she checked in, the receptionist handed her an envelope containing the next clue: “A tower for all our tomorrows.” By then, Dr. Tsai suspected Dr. Wallace was in Paris and possibly planning to propose.
“You better believe I put my dress on and I booked it to the Eiffel Tower!” she said.
She found him there, in a suit and holding a huge bouquet of roses. He knelt, told her he loved her (it was the first time he’d said it aloud), and asked her to marry him. Then, they headed to the Pont Des Arts, a pedestrian bridge over the Seine River, where he pulled out a bottle of water he’d been carrying in his back pocket. “On the bridge, overlooking the Seine, with the Notre Dame in the background, he sat me down and washed my feet,” she said. He said he did so as “a sign of being a servant to her and a lifetime commitment” and also as a way of honoring Jesus, who washes the feet of his disciples in the Bible. Then, they traipsed around Paris, ate crepes, watched fireworks, and returned to their separate hostels.
On Feb. 8, they were married at the Manor House, a mansion in the foothills of Littleton, Colo., that looks not unlike the White House. It was a bluebird day — 24 hours of perfect weather between two massive snowstorms.
The afternoon ceremony took place in a whitewashed, sunlit room and began with the groom walking down the aisle alone. “He was smiling from the moment he walked in,” said Heather Chen, a cousin of the bride. “I thought he was going to pull a muscle.”
The bride also walked down the aisle alone, in a crepe, mermaid-style wedding gown that fit her like a cat suit. “She cried all the way down the aisle,” said Dr. Davis, a bridesmaid. “She was sobbing. It wasn’t sadness but gratitude.”
Bryan Stoudt, a Presbyterian minister based in Philadelphia, led the couple through their vows, which they wrote themselves. The groom began, “I love you fiercely, unquenchably, unbreakably.” Halfway through, he paused, overwhelmed by emotion and unable to continue. Eventually, he looked at the bride and said, “You took my breath away. Again.”
At one point, the 170 or so guests sang the gospel song, “Reckless Love.” Almost everyone appeared familiar with the words and sang so heartily it almost sounded as if there was a gospel choir in the room.
Overall, the wedding had a strong participatory feeling, partly because the bride and groom had a wedding party of 25 who seemed determined to “love on” the couple, to use the groom’s terminology.
“Their wedding really was a community activity,” Dr. Davis said.
Much later, the couple departed in a car with soda cans (they don’t drink alcohol) tied to the back. “My husband and I personally drank like two six packs of Dr Pepper and root beer,” said Meggie Francisco, their wedding coordinator who is based in Columbus, Ohio. “There’s this old-fashioned, vintage feel about Carmelle and Bradley that I love, so I wanted to make sure there was a throwback feel to their exit.’’
The porch of the Manor House was crowded with guests clapping and waving and sending the couple off for their first night together — ever. “It’s going to make our intimacy extra sweet, having waited for so long,” the bride said several days before. “It helps us have a beautiful, natural, organic transformation from being friends to being husband and wife.”
On This Day
When Feb. 8, 2020
Where The Manor House, a mansion in the foothills of Littleton, Colo.
Wedding Registry Instead of traditional wedding gifts, the couple asked guests to help purchase medical equipment — a stretcher for transporting patients, oxygen cylinders, a suture kit — needed by Family Legacy. Since 2010, the bride has volunteered for Family Legacy, an organization that provides education and medical care to children in Zambia.
Fireworks Before getting into their getaway car, the couple walked/kissed/smiled/hugged/posed their way through two columns of so-called cold fireworks, which do not create a wildfire hazard and are even cool enough to touch.
Prayers for Two The couple prayed together before the ceremony, on opposite sides of a door so he wouldn’t see her dress.
Two Dresses During the ceremony, the bride wore a Pronovias Vicenta dress, found on preownedweddingdresses.com and an Enzoani Larissa dress from stillwhite.com for the reception. “It’s better for the environment,” she said of her recycled dresses.
Two Homes For now, the couple will have a long-distance marriage, with Dr. Tsai in Philadelphia (and all over the world) and Dr. Wallace in Denver. In the summer, they plan to move to Birmingham, Ala., and live together for the first time.
