❤️ I Got Married ❤️
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A personal update: I got married on June 17 in the Hudson Valley! We had a blast.
I’m back in the full swing of things. My new wife, Sara Joe Wolansky, and I will go to Japan on our honeymoon in October. (If you have a great sushi hookup let me know.)
Until then, I’m back hunting for stories for you. So please send me your tips and ideas. You can always reach me at eric@newcomer.co. Scoops are the ultimate wedding present.
For those of you who are interested, I thought I’d share a little bit about how I met Sara Joe and about the wedding.
Sara Joe and I met our freshman fall at Harvard. We kept running into each other: first at various comedy clubs’ introductory sessions, then in our freshman intro film class. We spent much of our time together in college at 14 Plympton Street, the home of The Crimson.
Sara Joe is so brilliant and driven and beautiful. She’s the type of person who wants to do everything and see everything.
For a long time, we were just friends.
After college, Sara Joe went to USC on her way to becoming a documentary filmmaker. I moved to San Francisco to become a technology reporter. When I would visit her in Los Angeles, it rained. When she came to see me in San Francisco, her car got robbed. But we remained steadfast friends.
Almost exactly a decade after we first met, we kissed at a meeting of The Crimson grad board. Well, that night after the meeting.
A few months later, I moved to New York. Before the pandemic, we moved into an apartment together in Crown Heights. Almost a year ago, I proposed on a hiking trail.
On June 17, we got married at Liberty View Farm in Highland, New York. Our wedding was officiated by a good friend, the design chair at The Crimson during our time there.
When I sat down to reflect on marrying Sara Joe, the first thing I thought I’d tell you — just to get it out of the way — was that technology, the typical subject matter around here, was absent and inconsequential.
After all, I relished not having my iPhone on my wedding day. I pawned it off to a groomsman. Nearly every friend I’d want to stalk on Instagram was on hand, in the material realm, on a farm in the Hudson Valley. And Twitter was the last thing on my mind. I’ve never felt so present and unplugged.
But — the more I thought about it after the glow of the wedding — all the pieces of technology that made our wedding wonderful flooded to me: the cameras, the airplanes hauling our guests across the globe, Spotify and speakers, the global supply chains that make getting nice clothes easy, the online registries. Etsy delivered us chocolate sunflowers and a red panda cake topper. WithJoy helped to wrangle our guests. Ketubah.com sold us a beautiful Ketubah design to hang on our wall and we found the Hebrew words for our marriage contract on some random website. Google prompted us to check out Liberty View Farm as a potential wedding venue in the first place. That’s how we found our photographer and the Klezmer band. ChatGPT gave me words of encouragement as I was writing my vows and even offered a few minor helpful edits. With the help of Adobe InDesign, Sara Joe and I crafted a newspaper a few weeks before the wedding to hand out to our guests as a program. A crossword creator tool online helped us whip up a personal crossword for the back page.
Where, how, who, and even the articulation of why were facilitated by contemporary technology.
Of course, technology doesn’t get any of the psychological credit.
What mattered and what I will remember are the human things: the little kisses that Sara Joe and I snuck throughout the day; the glow my friends and family had talking to us as a married couple; dancing to Taylor Swift’s Lover as our first dance as a couple and then Invisible String alone together at the end of the night; how the hora seemed to go on hysterically forever; the kind and funny wedding toasts; the conversations with wedding guests; and the catchup moments with relatives I see too rarely.
I’m sad it’s over, but I’m so happy to spend the rest of my life with Sara Joe.
I’ve hosted two events this year — an artificial intelligence conference and a wedding. Both were pivotal life events in their own way. And the tech conference host in me couldn’t help feeling jealous of the groom version of me. A wedding offers such ripe themes: love, friendship, and family. Writing my vows was an absolute joy. How can AI compete with that?
A wedding is a good reminder of what matters in life: people, love, family, and friends.
Technology can make our lives better. It can bring us closer together and enhance our experiences. But what we cherish are the people in our lives.
It’s a good reminder as I move forward with this newsletter. The best stories offer a keen look at technology and the money behind it, yes. But they also celebrate the people. They look at the human story behind the savvy investments and technological innovation.
June 17 was a beautiful reminder of what matters.
❤️ I Got Married ❤️
Congrats! Best post of the day/week/month.
Lovely. Mazel tov!