Read more from The Big Day, The Boston Globe’s weddings column.
Neighbors Courtney Berry and Thomas Rockett weren’t allowed to date — after all, they were only in middle school — but they devised a way to meet up, away from their parents, anyway. “We both had dogs,” says Courtney, now 27. “And we never wanted to walk them until we developed crushes on each other,” she says.
The Berrys and Rocketts lived five houses apart. They spent most weekends together; their mothers first connected at a Marblehead moms group when the two were babies.
Courtney remembers Thomas from preschool — “He was always getting in trouble,” she says. Thomas’s first memory of Courtney is riding with her in a hot-pink Barbie Jeep at a Berry family cookout, when they were about 4. Though they went to different schools through the eighth grade, summers brought them squarely into each other’s orbits, going together to Marblehead’s Devereux Beach, swimming in the town’s two yacht club pools, riding their bikes. At Courtney’s house, they’d listen to music and jump on her trampoline — “I asked my mom for one in seventh grade, as a way to have him come over,” she says.
“Every girl had a crush on him,” she says. “Same goes with you,” Thomas, now also 27, adds. “She was always happy, always giggling,” he says. Then and now, “She just lights up the room.”
In 2013, they continued taking their dogs out separately, meeting in front of the house equidistant from each of theirs. After being shyly brushed aside by a rule-following Courtney, “Finally, when we were going into high school, he did kiss me right there,” she says. A few days later, he asked her to be his girlfriend. Courtney’s parents normally wouldn’t allow it, but they made an exception “because they knew Thomas,” she says.
Thomas earned money helping out at his family’s property management company, so he could take Courtney, decked out in a yellow dress and statement necklace, on their first date. Courtney’s mother dropped them off at Caffe Italia in Marblehead. Both ordered chicken piccata, as they still do when they go there now. There weren’t many dinners in restaurants, though, thanks to high school constraints such as budgets and curfews. Most often, Courtney and Thomas hung out together with their friend group from Marblehead High School, and they had homework, and sports. Courtney played soccer and lacrosse, while Thomas was on the baseball, football, and swim teams.
The scarcity of their alone time “made every little moment count more,” Thomas says.
They cheered for each other at games — Courtney painted his No. 3 on her cheek. And their families supported each other as well. When the Berrys brought Kayla, their adopted baby girl, home in 2008, the Rocketts were waiting to greet them with balloons. But there were challenging times, too, including family health struggles and other stressors, beginning when Courtney and Thomas were in elementary school.
“I just remember Thomas, his sister, Margaret, his mom, his dad were there every day to give a ride or bring dinner, to take us out, or make us laugh,” Courtney says. She and Thomas “have always leaned on each other because they’re just so private,” she says of her family. Because of that, the couple’s early bond only grew stronger.
“We loved each other because we were best friends, just from our life experiences,” Thomas says. “And then that slowly turned into real love.”
After they graduated from high school in 2017, Courtney enrolled in Providence College in Rhode Island, to study business management. Thomas, recovering from a torn ACL, went on to The Hotchkiss School in Connecticut. “I needed an extra year to get healthy to get recruited for baseball,” he says.
“We never talked about” breaking up for college, Courtney says: “Of course we’re going to be together.”
In 2018, Thomas began a bachelor’s degree in political science at Trinity College in Connecticut, earning a spot as a pitcher on the baseball team. “Somehow, we always found a way to see each other,” Thomas says.
In the spring of 2020, Courtney, then a junior, began a semester abroad in Florence. Four weeks later, pandemic closures sent them both home.
They talked on the phone, but couldn’t see each other. “It felt almost like we were not going to make it,” she says. “It scared the hell out of us.”
Says Thomas: “From there our relationship got a lot more mature and a lot more serious.”
It made him assess his priorities.
“Those five months were insane without her. We were physically separated for the first time in our lives,” he says. When they finally did see each other, “I [realized] I couldn’t live a second without her.”
He knew then: “I’m going to marry her. It’s just a matter of when.”
After Courtney graduated in 2021, she and four friends moved into an apartment in South Boston. After his graduation in 2022, Thomas and three friends got a place five blocks away.
In 2024, the couple moved in together, but there was no rush to get engaged. “We were just having so much fun, enjoying life, and we felt like we were already going to spend forever together,” Courtney says.
That next step came on January 17, 2025. Thomas drove Courtney to Devereux Beach, where they had celebrated childhood birthdays. They stood under an overhang as it poured, and he asked her to be his wife. “It was raining and snowing and it was freezing out, but it ended up being perfect,” Courtney says. When they stopped later at the Rockett house, 75 guests were waiting; Thomas had spent months coordinating a surprise engagement party, inviting her friends from all over the country.
On June 13, 2026, the couple wed at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross; an evening celebration at the Boston Harbor Hotel followed.
The bride and her father arrived at the church in a vintage Rolls-Royce. Courtney and Thomas were married by the same priest who had celebrated their baptism, First Communion, and confirmation at Our Lady Star of the Sea Catholic Church in Marblehead.
Placecards for each of their 235 guests opened to a handwritten note from the couple, sharing a special memory. A welcome basket for their guests included chocolates from the Salem Waterfront Hotel, which the Rockett family owns, and where Thomas works as a project manager.
Each of the 18 tables was marked with a photo of the bride and groom together at that respective age: Table 6 from Courtney’s 6th birthday party; Table 16 from their junior prom. They feel lucky to have marked so many milestones together, with their childhood friends still by their side. “Only the two of us made it the whole way,” Thomas says.
Read more from The Big Day, The Boston Globe’s weddings column. Recently married or engaged? Apply to have your wedding featured.
Carrie Simonelli is a multiplatform editor at The Boston Globe. Reach her at carrie.simonelli@globe.com or on Instagram: @csimonelliedits.