Marissa Maier, who grew up in a TriBeCa loft in the early ’90s, didn’t have a regular bedtime or even a regular wardrobe. She mostly wore costumes. Her mother, Kathleen Russo, was a talent agent for dancers, actors and writers, and there were always theatrical people coming over for dinner or putting on impromptu performances.
“It was very bohemian,” said Mary Shimkin, a friend of Ms. Russo who had lived in the loft for two years and is now the director of marketing at the Symphony Space, a performing arts organization on the Upper West Side. Even when Ms. Maier was young, Ms. Shimkin said, she seemed more grounded and grown up than the grown-ups. “I remember leaving for work at night and Marissa would be watching ‘Thirtysomething,’ at 7 years old,” she said.
In 1994, Ms. Maier and her mother moved into a loft in SoHo with Spalding Gray, the well-known actor and monologuist who Ms. Russo eventually married. Ms. Russo and Mr. Spalding had a son, Forrest Gray, and when Ms. Maier was 10, they all moved to Sag Harbor, N.Y., where another son, Theo Gray, was born.
Now 33, Ms. Maier describes her current life as the antithesis of her artsy, peripatetic upbringing. She is more a listener than a performer, has a regular 10 p.m. bedtime, and works regular hours, albeit long ones, as a story producer for “Dateline,” the NBC news magazine. In person, she’s noticeably poised, with a great laugh. “She doesn’t walk into a party and grab a microphone,” said Delphine Barguirdjian, Ms. Maier’s roommate at Sarah Lawrence College, where Ms. Maier graduated with a degree in nonfiction writing. “She’s a quiet observer.”
In 2011, Ms. Maier attended a birthday party in a downtown Manhattan bar and met Wes Lau, a graduate from Bucknell University who was working for a hedge fund. “I thought Marissa was very angelic,” he said. “She was very bright and radiant, beautiful. It was like a glow.”
Two weeks later, he found her profile on Facebook and sent her a message asking her out to dinner.
Mr. Lau’s mother, Rita Lau, emigrated to the United States from Taiwan, and his father, Sonny Lau emigrated from Hong Kong. They eventually settled in Norwalk Conn., where Mr. Lau grew up. As a teenager, he was part of the rollerblading scene, entering street competitions in Queens and posting YouTube videos of himself skating down rails and off roofs.
“Wes is a cool cat,” said Ellary Allis, another friend of Ms. Maier from Sarah Lawrence. Mr. Lau’s sister, Jennifer Lau, said, “He can be serious, but his preference is for the world to be lighthearted and everything to be a joke or a YouTube video.”
Beginning with their first date, the two felt connected in an almost uncanny way. Both said they often think of the same joke at the same time or find they are in a similar mood, or having a similar kind of day, even when apart. “It’s almost like we’re in sync, like quantum entanglement,” said Mr. Lau, 33. “It’s this concept that when something changes here, something very far away reacts.”
Most significantly, each experienced a suicide in the family during their senior year of high school. Spalding Gray disappeared in January 2004 and his body was found two months later in the East River.
Mr. Lau’s brother, Darrick Lau, committed suicide in February 2004, soon after turning 21. Mr. Lau remembers classmates in school staring at him afterward, and he rarely talked about it until he met Ms. Maier. “I finally met somebody who understood,” he said.
She was the first girlfriend Mr. Lau ever introduced to his family. “Within five minutes, we were all in love with her,” Jennifer Lau said. “She’s just super sweet, the biggest heart, super respectful, which is huge for my parents. And she has my brother’s sense of humor. It’s very dry, very sarcastic, very muted.”
When he met Ms. Maier’s family for the first time, he was handed a costume within minutes. He and Ms. Maier were recruited to participate in an art installation organized by Ms. Russo. They spent the next several hours wearing wooden costumes shaped like houses and standing perfectly still during a party at the Watermill Center in Water Mill, N.Y. “That first weekend he met my family, he just seamlessly fit in,” Ms. Maier wrote in an email. “I didn’t have to worry because Wes was up for anything.”
After seven months of dating, Ms. Maier asked him if they could call themselves boyfriend and girlfriend. “We were spending a lot of time together, we got along so well, and I didn’t want to feel aimless.”
He hesitated. “I think I might have said, ‘I’ll have to think about it,’” he said.
Her response was to gather her clothes and the other things she kept at his Manhattan apartment and leave. She didn’t slam the door but that was the feeling. “I was like ‘Oh, man, that’s it,’” he said. “All of her stuff was gone, even her toothbrush.”
Over the next several days, he wrestled with what to do. “My thought process was one every single bachelor must go through,” he said. “I was thinking, ‘I really like her but man, it’s a big commitment and I don’t know if I’m ready. But man, I really like her. Let me give her a call.’”
It took more than one call, but after about a week, the two got back together. They eventually adopted a nervous, antisocial dachshund they named Gertrude Stein. Gertie, as she is called, now accompanies them almost everywhere. “She really is such a pivotal part of our relationship,” Ms. Maier said. (Mr. Lau even created an Instagram account for Gertie, @cornchipfactory.)
In 2013, the couple moved into a tiny studio in Astoria, Queens. “We do sweet things for each other,” Mr. Lau said. “If I’m sick, she’ll take care of me. If she’s in bed and her feet are aching, I’ll make her a cup of tea.” Mr. Lau now spends his days working on Warnable Solutions, an app he cocreated to help schools and churches deal with shootings and other emergencies.
Mr. Lau proposed to Ms. Maier in June 2018, just as she was waking up from a nap. Her first response was, “You’re not proposing to me in bed, are you?”
On Sept. 28, the couple were married at the Sedgewood Club, a private community of houses surrounding China Lake in Carmel Hamlet, N.Y., The bride’s family has a house in the woods there, a red cabin Ms. Russo describes as “the tiniest tiny house with one super-steep staircase.”
On the day of the wedding, many leaves had turned the color of turmeric or paprika. The sky was unabashedly blue and the air was as comfortable as cashmere.
About 20 friends and family members, including Michael and Duska Maier, the bride’s father and stepmother, gathered for the ceremony on the deck of the club’s Adirondack-style boathouse, which was decorated with Chinese paper lanterns.
Ms. Barguirdjian, Ms. Maier’s college roommate, became a Universal Life minister so that she could officiate and began by asking the group to form a circle and meditate together for two minutes. Later, Ms. Barguirdjian passed the couple’s wedding rings around so that each person could bless them in their own way. Ms. Russo’s partner, who goes by the name Dave O., did so by shaking the rings in one hand as if they were dice. “I was trying to imbibe them with longevity,” he said.
Afterward, 150 guests arrived at the boathouse for the reception. Of course, there was at least one theatrical performance that involved an ornate costume. Just before dinner, Johnny Chisholm, a friend of Theo Gray, paddled a canoe out into the middle of the lake while wearing a purple velvet Shakespearean outfit and carrying a fanfare trumpet. He climbed onto a floating dock and yelled, “Hear ye! Hear ye! I would like to welcome you to be seated upstairs!”
During dinner on the upper level of the boathouse, several people gave speeches that were reminiscent of Mr. Gray’s famous monologues. “No one spoke for less than 15 minutes in that tradition of storytelling and going deep,” said Matt Goldman, a founder of the Blue Man Group and longtime friend of the bride and her mother. Ms. Russo, who now is the director of the podcast program at Stony Brook University, stood up with a sheaf of papers that she tossed off one by one, like petals on a flower, as she spoke.
In his speech, Forrest Gray, a film and television composer, said that the groom’s close relationship with Gertie “put on full display the qualities that make him such a great partner for Marissa — attentiveness, unwavering support, utter and complete devotion and a warm bowl of ground turkey with carrots when the going gets tough.”
ON THIS DAY
When Sept. 28, 2019
Where The Sedgewood Club in Carmel Hamlet, N.Y.
Wedding Attire The bride wore a slim-fitting lace dress from BHLDN, Anthropologie’s bridal line. She tied a skinny red ribbon around her waist. (Red is a symbol of good luck in Chinese culture.) The groom wore a dark blue tuxedo, also slim-fitting, by the Kooples. Their dog, Gertie, who mainly hid from guests, donned a tulle wedding dress.
East Meets West The food served during the cocktail hour was Asian inspired and included dishes like miso-glazed tofu and coconut shrimp. Dinner was all-American and featured mac and cheese, barbecued beef brisket and cornbread. Guests ate at long tables decorated with family photos, mismatched glass candlesticks and hydrangeas hand-painted in a pink/purple/green hue.
Meeting Offline The groom, who works in technology, said he was grateful he met Ms. Maier at an actual party. “We did it the old-fashioned way,” he said. “No Tinder. We weren’t matched by an algorithm. We were matched in real life. I feel like a dinosaur.”
Family First The couple are close with their families. They went on their honeymoon — a road trip to Vermont — with the groom’s sister, Jennifer Lau. The couple is in the process of buying a two-bedroom apartment in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, which they will be sharing with the bride’s brother Theo Gray.
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