Read more from The Big Day, The Boston Globe’s new weddings column.
In the spring of 2020, Nick Kaffine was in his rom-com era.
A Northeastern undergrad then, he spent most of his time glued to a screen in his off-campus housing after his social life went online during the COVID-19 pandemic. Between playing “Call of Duty” and doing his coursework, the Billerica native began streaming love story after love story.
“[A romantic comedy] is just a feel-good movie, sometimes,” Nick says, “but I think, sometimes, too, it’s very interesting to see these different scenarios that lead to people coming together.”
Nick’s own rom-com began that April.
His university friends had been hosting weekly video call catch-ups to stay in touch during lockdown. But one night, he was one of just two people to show up.
After the awkward realization that no one else was joining, Nick and his good friend, Rachel Eng, discovered they didn’t need them. They talked for four hours.
In the lingo of romance films and novels, this situational “setup” is referred to as “only one bed”: a circumstance that puts two individuals in close shared quarters, leading them to confront unresolved matters between them. On Zoom, Rachel and Nick found themselves in a “forced proximity” trope for the digital age.
At the time, Rachel was finishing her final undergrad semester at Northeastern from her parents’ house in Wyckoff, N.J. Meeting through mutual friends, she and Nick had grown close since sophomore year. Their mutual interests kept the friendship going — in 2020, they were co-leaders of Northeastern’s Entrepreneurs Club.
Before the pandemic, Nick would often join Rachel at a Back Bay co-working space, pursuing their side hustles between coops and homework. His was a clothing brand with friends, while Rachel had founded the popular Boston restaurant social media account, Two Taste Buddiez, in 2017 with fellow undergrad Maddie Gatto. As TTB grew in popularity — they clock 122k followers on Instagram and 118k on TikTok — Nick became Rachel’s go-to plus-one for restaurant events around town.
While swapping campus and pop culture gossip on the April Zoom, Nick began listening to his longstanding suspicion that their ease of conversation could be something more than just friendship.
“This was the time to shoot your shot,” says Nick, who would enter his final year of undergrad that fall. “If things didn’t work out, we’re not in school anymore, and our lives would have diverged anyway.”
When Nick suggested they go out — not just as friends — a few weeks later, the possibility of romance took Rachel by surprise. But while initially hesitant, she agreed to a date for when she returned to Boston in August.
Dinner at a now-closed restaurant they’d prefer not to name was followed by “the world’s worst movie,” says Rachel. Both were feeling a little stressed. “It was like, ‘How do we need to change our behavior to indicate that we’re actually going to be on a date?’,” she says.
The movie (“The Kissing Booth 2”) may have failed to win their hearts, but later that night, Nick and Rachel shared their first kiss.
“Everything I liked about Nick as a friend became more amplified when we started dating,” says Rachel, who began a master’s in public health at Northeastern that fall. “[In college, I thought] the person I’m going to date has to add to my life or they’re going to subtract. Nick was equally as ambitious and very driven, and I needed that in a partner.”
Both had career goals and knew they’d have to be flexible and adaptable in their relationship to achieve them. After they graduated in 2021, they bridged their next 2½ years by planes and trains. Her job with Deloitte Consulting in New York was largely remote, and her side gig with Two Taste Buddiez allowed for frequent visits to see Nick, who was working as a software engineer at Boston-based Flexcar.
They FaceTimed and kept a shared Notes list of date ideas for the next time they’d be together: make meatballs, “blind” rank the Trolli sour gummy worm flavors. (Purple is superior, they agree.)
Another goal, “get a dog,” was accomplished when Millie, a 2-month-old miniature dachshund, joined their family in March 2022. (She lived and traveled with Rachel until both relocated to Boston in April 2024.) Films the couple wanted to watch filled out the list — featuring heart-pounding franchises, like “The Fast and the Furious” and “Mission: Impossible,” rather than the wistfully romantic.
Nick proposed to Rachel at Fan Pier on Oct. 21, 2023. Marriage discussions had begun earlier that year; Rachel’s intentions to attend Northwestern Kellogg School of Management for her MBA (which she starts this fall) helped to frame their timeline for a proposal, a wedding, and then a Chicago move, marking the couple’s first home together.
For their wedding, they chose the Maples Estate, a restored 1855 farmhouse venue in Schoharie, N.Y., on the banks of the Schoharie Creek River. As most of their 121 guests would be traveling from New Jersey or Massachusetts, the Hudson Valley was an idyllic midpoint destination for the weekend-long festivities.
Rachel and Nick, now both 27, wed on June 21 in an outdoor ceremony beneath a canopy of trees with artfully arranged anthuriums and Phalaenopsis orchids. They exchanged vows they had written, centered on love built on friendship and the joys found in the “mundane and everyday.”
Food was an “obvious priority” for the celebration, says Rachel. The couple tapped Dave the Butcher, a Beacon, N.Y.-based caterer, to create a menu to be cooked live on an open fire on the venue grounds. A whole roast pig was carved for pork belly skewers during cocktail hour — then served with a tangy fish sauce vinaigrette at dinner.
The couple commissioned two cakes from micro-bakery A Tiny Kitchen — a 3-foot-long dark chocolate cake with pretzel caramel for guests, and a 6-inch vegan carrot cake with lemon curd just for them.
After exchanging vows, Rachel swapped her Nadia Manjarrez wedding gown for a red dress by Hong Kong designer Cheryl Leung‘s label, Sau Lee, for a traditional Chinese tea ceremony.
Their dog, Millie, and Rachel’s parents’ 14-year-old Shih Tzu bichon, Lydia, served as “flower girls.” The pups themselves and custom Fatheads of them starred in a raucous dance floor entrance to Taylor Swift’s “Love Story.” It was a highlight of the night, Nick and Rachel agree.
But for their own first dance, the newlyweds chose “Can’t Help Falling in Love” by Kina Grannis. The dreamy acoustic cover is from the soundtrack of “Crazy Rich Asians” — a 21st-century rom-com that lingers, just like their own love story.
Read more from The Big Day, The Boston Globe’s new weddings column.
Rachel Kim Raczka is a writer and editor in Boston. She can be reached at rachel.raczka@globe.com.