“Guess the place this photograph was taken” was the immediate John Sasscer Sanders Jr. gave alongside a photograph on his Hinge relationship profile. The picture captured Mr. Sanders at a book-signing occasion for the sociologist Matthew Desmond in the course of the 2023 Nationwide E-book Competition in Washington.
Shannon Shiyi Wu had volunteered on the competition that yr, and was acquainted with Mr. Desmond’s work. So when Mr. Sanders favored considered one of her profile pictures in September 2023, Ms. Wu checked out his profile and noticed the photograph from the competition. “I do know precisely the place that’s,” she responded. “That e book is ‘Poverty, by America.’” They chatted about how Ms. Wu had learn Mr. Desmond’s Pulitzer Prize-winning e book, “Evicted,” and visited the exhibit it impressed on the Nationwide Constructing Museum in 2018.
It was the primary of many shared pursuits for the couple. Their first date, days after they matched on Hinge, nevertheless, received off to a tough begin when Mr. Sanders went to the flawed location of the espresso store the place they’d agreed to satisfy. As soon as they pieced collectively the snafu and located one another half-hour later, the dialog flowed simply.
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She was “very simple to speak to, very partaking and enjoyable,” Mr. Sanders stated. “I believed she had a beautiful, distinctive snicker.”
Ms. Wu, 33, is the director of cost coverage on the American Hospital Affiliation. Born and raised in Libertyville, Sick., she obtained a bachelor’s diploma in psychology at Princeton and a Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg College of Public Well being.
Mr. Sanders, 37, who was born and raised in Chevy Chase, Md., has a bachelor’s diploma in economics from Rice College, a grasp’s diploma in accountancy from Notre Dame, and an M.B.A. from the College of Virginia Darden College of Enterprise. He’s the senior supervisor of technical accounting at Worldwide Sport Expertise, an organization that gives services for lotteries and casinos.
Their subsequent dates by means of the autumn of 2023 had been a collection of considerate pursuits, resembling seeing a comedy present, attempting Peruvian meals, visiting the Rothko exhibition on the Nationwide Artwork Gallery, and eating on the Dabney, a Michelin-star restaurant in Washington.
It was on their first weekend away collectively that December, when Mr. Sanders invited her to his household house on the jap shore of Maryland, that Ms. Wu realized their relationship had actual promise. Wanting over at him within the automotive en route, whereas listening to her favourite tune by her favourite band (“I Want My Lady” by the Nationwide), she realized she didn’t need the journey to finish. “‘Oh my gosh, I may very well be actually severe with this man,’” she recalled considering.
Automobile rides had been additionally the place Mr. Sanders felt his affection blooming, albeit with totally different audio materials. He cherished listening to audiobooks like “Unhealthy Blood” by John Carreyrou or “American Prometheus” by Kai Chook and Martin J. Sherwin collectively whereas driving. “She has an unbelievable mental curiosity that was partaking from the beginning,” he stated. “I study a lot from her.”
In November 2024, simply over a yr after they met, Mr. Sanders proposed to Ms. Wu close to the Touchstone Gallery in downtown Washington. It was the place they’d gone on their second date, and steps from the spot the place they first kissed. “I had beforehand stated to him, I didn’t desire a huge scene or something,” stated Ms. Wu of their engagement conversations.
Their wedding ceremony on Feb. 28 was low-key as effectively. They married on the Superior Courtroom of the District of Columbia in a ceremony officiated by George Barbour, the department chief of the wedding bureau, with simply their mother and father and Mr. Sanders’s brothers and toddler nephew.
“I cried just a little once I was studying my vows, and I feel he additionally needed to take just a few breaths there,” Ms. Wu stated. “I can’t think about doing that in entrance of 100 or 200 folks.”
The small group then shared a family-style meal at Ambar, a Balkan restaurant on Capitol Hill, ending with a hazelnut torte from the Heidelberg Pastry Shoppe in Arlington, Va. Their yet one more formal wedding ceremony contact: taking their portraits amid the hovering areas and thousands and thousands of books on the Library of Congress, which organizes the Nationwide E-book Competition yearly.
