Sew in love: Trucker woos NYC nurse with needlework
Jody August and Benjamin Hale: March 19, 2016
THE INTRODUCTION: Jody and Ben began to stitch their lives together when they met at a party in Newark around 1992. She was about 21 and a part-time student taking a few classes at the University of Delaware, with the intention of majoring in art. He was about 24, had graduated from Ithaca College in New York with a degree in psychology and was working at AdvoServ with intellectually and developmentally handicapped kids. He had gone to Tatnall School; she had gone to St. Mark’s. Jody and Ben became friends with no romantic leanings who seemed to see each other often when they were out. Jody would go on to move to New York City to study nursing. After 17 years in the mental health industry, Ben decided to try long-distance trucking “before I finished with this life.” One day in 2012, Ben was sitting in his truck in South Carolina when he spotted Jody on Facebook. By then, she was 40 and he was 43. He had always liked her, so he friended her and sent her a message. He remembers having such a strong feeling about her that as he pressed the send button, he said out loud to himself, “Your life is going to change.” Jody was delighted to hear from him. They messaged back and forth on Facebook. Then they started talking on the phone and that quickly turned into talking for a couple of hours every day. At some point, Ben felt so strongly that he told Jody he loved her, which had surprised and delighted her. “If I feel something for someone, I say it,” he says. “I don’t have a filter.” Ben’s schedule required him to be on the road for six weeks and then off six days. About six weeks after they started talking, in September of 2012, they agreed on Ben coming to New York to visit. He was taking the train into the city, and they were supposed to meet at 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue in front of the New York Public Library, across from Jody’s office. She was nervous. “We had been talking on the phone and getting along so well, but things can be different when you see someone in person,” she says.
THE FIRST KISS: She decided to walk over to the meeting site during lunch and was surprised to find Ben there early. He gave her a big hug “and it felt good,” Jody says. Twenty years after they first met, they kissed.
THE FIRST DATE: They had already agreed to go to dinner at Le Barricou in Brooklyn. She thinks they ordered duck. From that moment, they dated steadily. He thought she was clever, quick witted and ebullient. She thought they were cut from the same cloth. Both were adopted. They liked the same books and movies. They had the same sense of humor. Both had been in bands. Both were disdainful of authority. Jody says she knew pretty quickly after Ben’s trip to New York that he was the one. One thing that helped seal it was when she mentioned she had ripped the knee in her favorite pair of pants and could no longer wear them. “Let me see,” he said, and she gave the pants to him. He pulled out a sewing kit and repaired the tear. “He did a pretty good job, and I was super impressed,” Jody says. Ben says his sewing skills date back to grammar school when someone decided it was a good idea for all the kids to know how to cook a little and sew a little. The class made pillowcases. His training continued in the Boys Scouts, where it’s a valuable skill when a tent or uniform rips. He also tailors clothes he’s bought at thrift shops for himself. By 2013, Jody had moved back to Delaware to live with Ben, transferring her nursing job and finishing school from here. By the end of 2014, they were talking about marriage. He had sent her a photo of his grandmother’s ring asking if she liked it. It might sound unromantic she says, but they were an older couple and “giving someone something that they will be wearing the rest of their life without having any idea of what the other person’s tastes are isn’t very practical.” She didn’t think the style suited her and described to him what she had in mind, even saying she didn’t care if she got a diamond because she liked rubies.
They wanted a winter wedding. They got a blizzard.
Soon-to-be-brides burnt by wedding dress store
THE PROPOSAL: On March 20, 2015, Ben pointed out to Jody that his parents had given them tickets to Longwood Gardens and they needed to use them. He suggested going the next day. She readily agreed with no suspicions because they tried to go out and do something whenever they had a weekend together. She did not know he had been working with a jeweler at AR Morris on Market Street to design a ring that featured a princess-cut diamond flanked with ruby baguettes. He had chosen Longwood, he said, because the gardens had historically been a place where many things started for him: It was the first place his family visited after they moved to Delaware from Texas; one of his first jobs was at the Terrace Dining Room; and it had been a primary source for his notions of idyllic beauty. As they entered the gardens, he had the black snakeskin-patterned ring box in his overcoat pocket and worried Jody would bump against him and start asking questions. They immediately veered right to the small lake. In the distance, two beak-to-beak geese were enjoying each other’s company. Ben thinks the idea of getting down on one knee is outmoded. So he bent forward and started to say, “Would you like to get married” and then decided mid-sentence that wasn’t good, so it came out, “Would you like to get...would you marry me?" She was surprised, but he was rewarded with a big smile and enthusiastic yes. They hugged. He put the ring on. They proclaimed their love for each other. Then they went to the Terrace Dining Room and ate quail, mushroom soup, crabcakes and bread baked in flower pots. “On the way, I regaled her with the impeccable job I had done in the ring selection,” he says. She laughs. “He was very self-congratulatory,” she says. “And he did do a good job.”
THE CEREMONY: They married March 19, 2016, at the Carriage House at Rockwood Park. They liked the stone walls and exposed beams; they had not wanted a cookie-cutter hotel banquet room. Jody and Ben settled on a “Sew in Love” theme to celebrate weaving their lives together. Button bouquets with feather adornments were carried by the bridesmaids. Ornate boutonnieres were made by Jody, and bridesmaid brooches were made by Jenny McFadden. Ben touchingly read “The Cloths of Heaven” by W.B. Yeats. Jody had officiant Bryant Heisinger, also known as the Marriage Man, alter their vows to include, “Will you Jody promise to strive to love Ben as much as you love the kittens?” That made Ben and the guests laugh.
THE DRESS: The bride hunted for a traditional gown and even went to Kleinfeld Bridal in New York, but she didn’t think any of white or cream gowns looked good on her. Instead, she chose a black corset jacket that she ordered from KMK Designs on Etsy and had a striped floor-length skirt made locally by Y.D. Manigault. She plans to wear the jacket again.
SOMETHING OLD: Her necklace.
SOMETHING NEW: The dress.
NOTHING BORROWED OR BLUE.
THE RECEPTION: The “Sew in Love” theme really kicked into high gear, with lots of do-it-yourself decor made by Jody and her bridesmaids. Centerpieces were made from vintage sewing machines that Jody and Ben found at yard sales or bought on eBay. They paid $10 to $50 for them. They surrounded the machines with silk flowers and at the end of the night gave them away to guests. “I carried them up there. I was not carrying them home,” Jody says. “I had people like my mom telling me that nobody was going to want to carry that home, but now people are like, ‘I didn’t get a sewing machine.’” She kept only the one at the head table. Mini embroidery hoops with different colored fabrics marked table numbers. Sewing pattern paper covered glass vases for candle holders in the bar area, and zipper flowers were used as accents along with metal lattice work candle holders. Wedding favors included chocolate candy buttons made by Jenny McFadden and mini sewing kits with “Sew in Love” and an anatomically correct heart printed on them. Guests were asked to sign pieces of materials rather than a guest book, and Jody plans to make a quilt from them. Guests also were asked to sit for silhouette artist Brian Miller. He cut two silhouettes and gave one to the guest and one to Jody and Ben, who is using them to make a wall collage at their home.
THE MOST POPULAR GIFT: Bedding. “We have enough to last us a long time,” Jody says.
THE HONEYMOON: They postponed the wedding trip to this summer, when they plan to visit Machu Picchu and the Galapagos Islands.
THE FAMILY TREE: The bride is the daughter of Cheryl August and Roger Lore of Landenberg, Pennsylvania, and of Pam and Fred August of Wilmington. The groom is the son of Mary Lou and John Hale of Kennett Square, Pennsylvania.
WHAT’S NEXT: The couple lives with their cats in their Newark home, which they plan to revamp. Jody is a registered nurse working remotely in primary care for One Medical Group remotely and also for Christiana Care in adult medicine. Ben now is enamored of his job with Dart Paratransit, which he took in 2013. There is lots of needlework in their future. Ben plans to turn a couple of pairs of long pants into shorts for their honeymoon trip because he has long legs and most shorts are too short for him. And Jody’s still got plans for that quilt.
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