For Samantha Loren Moray and Lanny Seth Grossman, love has always been in the unexpected details, from an after-date parking garage conversation to a “dine around” second date to a “walk down memory lane” proposal.
The two matched on the Lox Club, a members-only app for Jewish singles, in February 2021. They exchanged messages and spoke on the phone shortly thereafter. But it wasn’t until April 1 — the day after Mr. Grossman returned to the Los Angeles area, where both lived, after three months in Miami — that they had their first date at Wally’s Beverly Hills.
“Conversation was easy and Lanny made me laugh,” Ms. Moray said. After dinner, since they were parked on different levels of the same garage, Mr. Grossman offered to walk Ms. Moray to her car and then asked her to drive him to his.
“We continued to talk in her car for another 45 minutes,” Mr. Grossman said. “That really put me over the edge. I definitely needed to see her again.” The night ended with a first kiss.
Their second date, on April 6, started at Mr. Grossman’s apartment. He called the night, “Dine around Venice.” It began with takeout food from the Win-Dow restaurant and Negronis with orange peel from a tree in his front yard. After, they walked to the Rose Café for tuna pizza and Japanese yams and then to Forma Venice for fettuccine Bolognese.
Two months later, things truly clicked for the two. Mr. Grossman met Ms. Moray in Water Mill, N.Y., for a birthday party in June with her best friends. “It felt like I had known him forever,” Ms. Moray said. “There was an ease to being together that is indescribable.”
Then, Ms. Moray, 33, met Mr. Grossman, 45, and his family and friends at his family’s lake house at Reynolds Lake Oconee in Georgia over July 4. “Ten days straight waking up next to her solidified what I had been thinking and now confirmed to be true,” Mr. Grossman said. “She was the one.”
Ms. Moray grew up in Beverly Hills, Calif. and founded Moraygency, a boutique communications agency based in Los Angeles. She has a Bachelor of Arts degree from the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at N.Y.U.
Mr. Grossman, who grew up in Miami, Fla., is the founder of EM50 Communications, a boutique public relations firm based in Los Angeles specializing in luxury lifestyle and hospitality. He has a bachelor’s degree in telecommunications from Indiana University.
Six months after they began dating, Mr. Grossman bought an oval diamond ring. Two months later, he proposed. Ms. Moray’s family would be in New York for her brother’s fiancée’s wedding shower. With everyone’s blessing, he seized the moment.
He rented the penthouse at the NoMo SoHo hotel, had it decorated, and invited Ms. Moray to be his date for a fictitious work dinner.
Gifts chronicling their relationship awaited her — a Russ & Daughters “Lox” hoodie celebrating their meeting; a custom pair of Nike IDs with her initials symbolizing their walking dates; a Lakers’ “Grossman” jersey representing Los Angeles; a membership card reading “Mrs. Samantha Grossman” for Reynolds’s Lake Oconee; and a lake photo puzzle featuring them.
The last box was an empty one on the terrace. “As she opened that box, I got down on one knee and proposed with the real final box,” Mr. Grossman said. Friends and family then joined them for a surprise cocktail party.
The couple, who now live together in Beverly Hills, were wed on Nov. 5 at the Beverly Hills Hotel with 254 guests, 154 of whom were provided with rapid tests in their welcome bags for use before the welcome dinner and wedding. All other guests were asked via email to test at home before the events. Rabbi Mark Kula, of Congregation B’nai Butte in Crested Butte, Colo., who had led the bar mitzvah ceremony for Mr. Grossman 32 years ago, officiated.
The wedding weekend included a deli takeover. The couple transformed Canter’s Deli into “Grossmans” for the welcome dinner, with custom staff aprons and ketchup and mustard bottles for the tables.
Guests were given green velvet yarmulkes and potato chips with caviar as they arrived. Additionally, they were treated to wood-fired pizza, a gospel choir joining the cantor, a fun house wall of framed escort cards, a 16-piece band, a custom dance floor of Beverly Hills Hotel green stripes, and late-night cheeseburgers, grilled cheese, fries and milkshakes.
“I always knew I wanted a black-tie wedding upside down,” Ms. Moray said. “I wanted something quirky and unexpected.”
