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It was August 2021, and Juliana Manchester was a bridesmaid in her cousin CJ’s wedding in Cranston, Rhode Island; Glenn LiBassi was a groomsman for one of his best friends since childhood. Juliana remembers first seeing Glenn when she was a young teenager and he was a soccer player at Assumption College, at the annual summer party CJ’s family hosted. “I have a bunch of cousins my age, and he’s the older cousin’s friend,” Juliana says. “We would always joke and say he was so cute.”
Now, at CJ’s wedding, it was Glenn noticing Juliana. “We naturally gravitated toward each other,” he says. “We were basically together the whole time.”
The next day, Juliana sent photos she had taken throughout the night to family and friends.
Then 19 and a nursing student at Rhode Island College, she says she wasn’t interested in a relationship. “I really had plans on just focusing on school and building my future.” Still, Juliana sent Glenn, who was 27 at the time, a picture she had taken of the groomsmen on Instagram. “Little did I know that that one text message would turn into [a conversation with] someone that I was going to marry one day,” she says.
Over the next few days, they kept messaging, eventually exchanging phone numbers. That week, Glenn invited her over. They watched a movie, then shared their first kiss.
The two started spending more time together.
That fall, Glenn went to a bachelor party in Nashville. “That’s when I realized that I really liked Juliana,” he says. “I was so happy to see her when I got back.” Soon after, he told her he loved her.
But their age difference, and their schedules, presented challenges.
The eight-year gap “was never really a problem between us personally,” Juliana says. Says Glenn: “We were more nervous about what other people would think.”
For their families and others closest to them, it wasn’t an issue, they say. “Plus, Glenn is super goofy and probably acts the way someone my age should act,” Juliana says with a laugh.
Coordinating the time to see each other was harder.
Juliana lived with her parents in Johnston, Rhode Island, while she commuted to school in Providence. Glenn had just finished grad school and was getting his feet under him in an accounting career. He was also living with his parents, about 25 minutes away in Scituate, Rhode Island, to save up money.
“He would come to my parents’, and we’d eat dinner, and he’d help me study sometimes, and then he’d go home, and it’d be late, and then he’d have to go to work the next day,” Juliana says.
Her dedication to school impressed him. “I saw how diligent she was in her studies, and I knew that she’d be very successful,” Glenn says. “That’s something I was looking for in a partner.”
Before long they were accompanying each other to family parties and events. “We’re both super family-oriented,” Juliana says.
She would go to Glenn’s house on Tuesdays, her day off from class, and have dinner with him and his parents. They spent time with her younger brother, carving pumpkins with him that Halloween and taking him places.
“With me being in school, it was a really stressful time,” Juliana says. “I could just tell from the beginning that he was a really supportive person.”
“We had our priorities,” she says. “He knew I had goals and that I would reach them, and I knew that he was getting himself settled in his career.” They kept working on their relationship, too, and “doing the back and forth” between houses, Juliana says.
Toward the end of nursing school, Juliana was working as a medical assistant and at a day care, while also juggling labs, classes, and clinical rotations. “We were each other’s break from the chaos,” she says.
As her May 2024 graduation approached, the couple began talking about getting engaged.
“It was an easy decision,” Glenn says. “She’s very, very driven, very smart. We have the same values. She loves children, something that was a big part of it.”
Glenn brought his mom to shop for an engagement ring that July, then took Juliana’s parents to dinner, at the restaurant where he and Juliana had their first official date, to ask their permission to propose. He held onto the ring for months while he debated where to pop the question, deciding on the Ocean House in Westerly. Again he enlisted family, this time Juliana’s sister. Walking around the seaside resort grounds, she helped him pick the perfect proposal spot.
On October 13, 2024, Glenn brought Juliana to the hotel’s Sunday brunch. “He kept getting up and going to the bathroom,” Juliana says. The pit stops were a guise to text Juliana’s sister, who was waiting outside the restaurant, in a garden overlooking the ocean. “When we were walking down the stairs, there were people [in the spot],” Juliana’s sister would tell her later. “She told them, ‘You have to go away, or hide, because my sister’s about to get proposed to.’” As Juliana stood looking out at the sea, Glenn took her hand, dropped on one knee, and asked her to marry him.
Juliana had a vision for the celebration they would spend about a year planning. “I always knew I wanted a winter wedding,” she says. They chose Kirkbrae Country Club, in Lincoln, Rhode Island, for their December 13 reception. The Catholic ceremony would be at St. Rocco’s in Johnston, the church where Juliana had made all of her Sacraments, and that Glenn’s grandmother had attended.
It was a busy year for the couple, who bought a house in Cranston in February 2025 and moved in a few months later, as Juliana interviewed for a full-time nursing job.
They also dealt with loss: Juliana’s great-grandmother died in June; Glenn’s grandmother died two months later. “We had the wedding to help us appreciate family and love and marriage more than ever,” Juliana says.
On the morning of the wedding, a horse-drawn carriage took the bride from her grandmother’s house to the church, a nod to Glenn, who grew up around horses. The bride wore a ball gown, and the same pearl ring her mother had worn when she married Juliana’s father. The fairy tale, winter wonderland theme carried throughout the reception, which was filled with Christmas trees the couple had brought in.
Juliana’s sister, her maid of honor, made a speech. She gave the bride and groom a gold clock that she’d stopped at the exact time the pair said “I do.” She said she hoped that “during any challenge, we would always remember when we said yes to forever,” Juliana says.
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Carrie Simonelli is a multiplatform editor at The Boston Globe. Reach her at carrie.simonelli@globe.com or on Instagram: @csimonelliedits.