Lisa appears to be part mouse. After all, her first date with Stephen ended with the fastest kiss on record and her skittering away through her gate. I’ll get to more of that later. The part of Lisa that isn’t small, bright-eyed, and fast holds a huge heart, abundant laughter, and a goofiness that bursts out among friends.


Stephen is the dapper, thoughtful gentleman on her arm. And he is a gentleman. He’s a holds-the-door, finds-the–only-green-Eagles-superbowl-shirt-in-the- city-for-Lisa, mails-her-classroom-supplies-from-across-the-world, and cooks-for-her kind of gentleman. Unrelated: he is also very fast.


They met on Bumble and had their first date at Amada in Old City. He was moving to Boston soon after but the assumption was that the date wouldn’t work out anyway. Wrong.


Spoiler: Stephen just moved back from Boston to be with Lisa.


They hit it off that first night. She laughed at his jokes and touched his arm and it was magic. She may have bolted after he kissed her goodnight but it was clear that there was something there.

In December, Lisa took the GRE. She came home exhausted and Stephen told her to relax on the couch while he made her a drink. She picked up a magazine while he did his thing by the bar. She read it cover to cover before realizing that she was still waiting for him. He had transformed their back room into a romantic scene with candles, flowers, string lights and a ring. Lisa hadn’t seen it coming at all!

We wandered around Lisa’s neighborhood in Society Hill and Old City for their engagement session and I cannot wait to see them again in a few months for their wedding at the Free Library of Philadelphia.

“When you trip over love, it is easy to get up. But when you fall in love, it is impossible to stand again.”
~ Albert Einstein