“Guess the place this picture was taken” was the immediate John Sasscer Sanders Jr. gave alongside a photograph on his Hinge courting profile. The picture captured Mr. Sanders at a book-signing occasion for the sociologist Matthew Desmond throughout the 2023 Nationwide Guide Competition in Washington.
Shannon Shiyi Wu had volunteered on the pageant that 12 months, and was conversant in Mr. Desmond’s work. So when Mr. Sanders preferred one in all her profile pictures in September 2023, Ms. Wu checked out his profile and noticed the picture from the pageant. “I do know precisely the place that’s,” she responded. “That guide is ‘Poverty, by America.’” They chatted about how Ms. Wu had learn Mr. Desmond’s Pulitzer Prize-winning guide, “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, obtained off to a tough begin when Mr. Sanders went to the unsuitable location of the espresso store the place that they had 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 participating and enjoyable,” Mr. Sanders stated. “I assumed she had an exquisite, distinctive snigger.”
Ms. Wu, 33, is the director of cost coverage on the American Hospital Affiliation. Born and raised in Libertyville, Unwell., she acquired a bachelor’s diploma in psychology at Princeton and a Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg Faculty 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 Faculty of Enterprise. He’s the senior supervisor of technical accounting at Worldwide Recreation Know-how, an organization that gives services for lotteries and casinos.
Their subsequent dates by the autumn of 2023 have been a collection of considerate pursuits, resembling seeing a comedy present, making an attempt 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 dwelling on the jap shore of Maryland, that Ms. Wu realized their relationship had actual promise. Trying 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 trip to finish. “‘Oh my gosh, I could possibly be actually critical with this man,’” she recalled considering.
Automobile rides have been additionally the place Mr. Sanders felt his affection blooming, albeit with completely different audio materials. He cherished listening to audiobooks like “Unhealthy Blood” by John Carreyrou or “American Prometheus” by Kai Fowl and Martin J. Sherwin collectively whereas driving. “She has an unbelievable mental curiosity that was participating from the beginning,” he stated. “I study a lot from her.”
In November 2024, simply over a 12 months after they met, Mr. Sanders proposed to Ms. Wu close to the Touchstone Gallery in downtown Washington. It was the place that they had 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 marriage ceremony on Feb. 28 was low-key as nicely. They married on the Superior Court docket 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 after I was studying my vows, and I believe he additionally needed to take a number of breaths there,” Ms. Wu stated. “I can’t think about doing that in entrance of 100 or 200 individuals.”
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 another formal marriage ceremony contact: taking their portraits amid the hovering areas and thousands and thousands of books on the Library of Congress, which organizes the Nationwide Guide Competition yearly.
