They swiped right, and that led them down the aisle
Lindsay Heck and Chris Hocker: April 30, 2016
THE INTRODUCTION: Lindsay Heck and Chris Hocker met during the July Fourth weekend in 2013 on Tinder, the then-newish mobile dating app. She was 33 and living in Wilmington while working in Philadelphia at Xfinity Live as director of sales. He was 32 and living in Arlington, Virginia, working for a real estate investment company, but was in the Delaware area while visiting his parents in Avondale, Pennsylvania. She had been out with friends at the Columbus Inn during happy hour when they suggested she try Tinder, so she signed up. She wanted to see how it worked and didn’t expect to meet anyone interesting. The next morning, Chris responded because his parents’ house was within the 25-mile circle she designated as a boundary. They both swiped right and started texting and then talking on the phone.
THE FIRST DATE: At the end of two weeks, Chris came up to visit his parents again (wink, wink). He and Lindsay went to dinner at Scratch Magoo’s on a rainy Friday night. They ordered cheesesteak eggrolls and “probably” a couple of shots of Fireball to settle their nerves. They could have spared themselves the bar bill. They both say they knew that night that they would get married. She says she can’t explain how or why, but expects it has something to do with being older and wiser. “When you know, you know,” she says.
THE FIRST KISS: When Chris dropped Lindsay off that night at her North Rodney Street house, he kissed her good night. They dated long distance for a year, taking turns driving back and forth every weekend. By March of 2014, they had decided Lindsay needed to move to D.C., and she moved on the Fourth of July weekend that year after getting a job with the Washington Convention and Sports Authority. It’s hard for her to say what she liked about Chris. “I’ll put it this way: Every day is a new adventure with him,” she says. He doesn’t take things too seriously and reminds her daily to relax and have a good time. Asked what he likes about her, she laughs and says, “Besides the fact that I cook him dinner every night?” They complete each other, she says, and are a good team. By the end of that year, they had talked about marriage.
THE PROPOSAL: They never went ring shopping. He asked her a couple of times what she liked and asked her to send him photos. She didn’t know he had had the ring for several weeks by March 2015. Lindsay did vaguely wonder why Chris had left dinner at a restaurant with his best friend and wife to run back to the best friend’s apartment the week before Easter 2015, which was April 5. Later she would discover that’s when he called her parents to ask for their permission to marry their daughter. She also didn’t know that he told her parents he was planning to propose the next day. So when he came down with a cold and then was sick all week, she was perplexed about why his parents and hers kept calling to ask how he felt. Chris, however, was facing a deadline. He had invited her parents to come to his parents’ house for Easter, and he needed to seal the deal before they got there, but Lindsay was working that Saturday. When she got off, they had plans to go to dinner and see Neil Diamond in concert. Chris picked her up from work, and they had an hour before dinner. She suggested they go to the Jefferson Memorial, which is her favorite monument. She didn’t know he had planned to propose there. When they arrived, though, they realized it was the first weekend of the Cherry Blossom Festival and thousands of tourists packed the area. Chris got cold feet. But as they walked back to their car, which was parked along the river, they reached a quiet area that was tourist-less, and he popped the question. She was really surprised. “Are you serious?” she asked. Yes, he said. Yes, she said.
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TELLING THE PARENTS: Because her parents had expected a call for a week, she believes “they were clearly waiting by the phone” when she called to tell them the happy news.
THE CEREMONY: They married April 30, 2016, at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Rehoboth Beach. The only wrinkle in the wedding was that after the rehearsal dinner, best man Matt Nelson had to drive back to D.C. because his wife went into labor with their second child. While Lindsay and Chris had a religious service, they also wanted it to reflect their personalities. They chose readings and also an Irish blessing to be read by their friends Sean Dougherty and Frank Hanson. Frank is from the African country of Ghana. He and Lindsay met seven years ago at Catherine Rooney’s Irish Bar in Trolley Square. Because Frank was reading the Irish blessing, he asked to be listed as “Frank O’Shea Hanson” in the wedding program. When the minister announced who would be doing the reading, and a very Irish Sean Dougherty walked to the pulpit with a clearly not Irish Frank Hanson, the guests erupted in laughter. The flower girl and ring bearer were Chris’s niece, Claire, 3, and Luke, 5, the children of Chris’s sister Lauren and her husband, Al Missirlian. Lindsay’s nephews, Ryan, 7, and Connor, 5, the sons of Jeff and Allison Heck, carried in a banner that said, “Uncle Chris, here comes your bride.” On the procession out, they flipped the banner around and it read, “Let’s party.”
THE DRESS: Lindsay wore a long sleeve Allure ivory sheath dress with a satin skirt, sweetheart neckline and lace embellishment across the bodice that she bought at Claire’s on Philadelphia Pike.
SOMETHING OLD AND BLUE: A bracelet with a blue stone that had belonged to her grandmother Mildred Kaufman.
SOMETHING OLD AND NEW: A vintage rhinestone hair comb from England that Lindsay bought on Etsy, so it was new to her, but also old.
SOMETHING OLD AND BORROWED: In her bouquet, she tucked four pins. Each had belonged to one of her four grandparents, who have all died: Mildred and Russell Kaufman and Frances and Alfred Leon Heck Jr.
THE RECEPTION: The reception was at the Rehoboth Beach Country Club. The decorative vibe was vintage with touches of art deco, and Lindsay got lots of ideas through her new job as an advertising salesperson for Weddingwire.com in D.C. They used lots of mercury glass accents and the floral pieces were soft whites with hanging amaranthus and quicksand roses. Personalized napkins read, “Good times never seemed so good,” a nod to the Neil Diamond Concert they attended the night they got engaged. The newlyweds were announced as husband and wife to “Paradise City” by Guns N' Roses, one of Chris’s favorite bands. The Blue Label Band kept the dance floor packed all night, and couple brought in Grotto’s Pizza as a late night snack. Best man Matt Nelson’s brother Ryan was also a groomsman and had been practicing the best man speech, just in case, and he shared sentimental childhood stories. The biggest laugh came when Ryan told a story about an afternoon fishing trip to a local lake when Chris got a fish hook stuck in his head, and the antics that came from the trip to the emergency room.
THE MOST POPULAR GIFT: Wine glasses. They got 16.
MOST SENTIMENTAL GIFT: A handmade, cross-stitched sampler made by sister-in-law Allison Heck with their names, wedding date and location, done in a beachy theme.
THE HONEYMOON: They went to Hawaii, where they spent the first half in Maui and the second half in Kauai. They rode bikes 30 miles down a dormant volcano and a helicopter around Kauai.
THE FAMILY TREE: The bride is the daughter of Karen and Lee Heck of Wilmington and the groom is the son of Laura and Bill Hocker of Avondale.
WHAT’S NEXT: They live in Arlington, Virginia. Chris, who grew up in Bel Air, Maryland, and graduated from the University of Baltimore with a degree in business, is a project manager for Rand Construction in Alexandria, Virginia. Lindsay, who attended Brandywine High School and earned a degree in English from the University of Delaware, works in Washington, D.C., as a venue specialist with WeddingWire.com, a job she started last summer. They hope to have children soon and plan to one day make their way back north to Delaware or Philadelphia.
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