With commencement drawing near, many soon-to-be graduates are asking the question, “What am I going to do with the rest of my life?” But a handful of students have popped a different, life-changing question: “Will you marry me?”
Freddie Fletcher ’14 and Mary DiGeronimo ’14 first met in the middle of eighth grade, preparing to take a service trip to Tennessee. They began dating about six months later and have been together ever since. Despite keeping their college choices secret from one another, both applied and were admitted to Dartmouth early decision, supported by the other’s peer recommendation letter.
Fletcher said that DiGeronimo was the only person surprised by his proposal at the end of last summer. As far back as high school, he said, friends and teachers had jokingly asked about their impending wedding plans. Both Fletcher and DiGeronimo said they thought, prayed and talked extensively about the prospect of marriage well before the engagement.
“We don’t want to just stumble into it and say, ‘Oh, the next logical thing to do is get married,’” Fletcher said.
Although DiGeronimo had her suspicions that a proposal was in the works, Fletcher was adamant that the time and place of the proposal come as a surprise. The day before he proposed, Freddie told DiGeronimo’s father the plan, asked for his blessing and reminded him to keep the proposal a secret. He gave his blessing but didn’t quite stay true to his word, Fletcher said. As the couple left Mary’s Virginia Beach, Virginia home, her father pulled out a camera and started snapping sentimental pictures. But apparently, DiGeronimo didn’t catch on. Fletcher proposed later that day during a walk on the beach, timing his proposal so that the sun would be setting.
“She was definitely, I think, surprised,” Fletcher said. “I don’t think she thought that I was ready to go to that level while we were still in school.”
Since then, DiGeronimo and Fletcher both have devoted a significant amount of time and effort to wedding planning — so much so that DiGeronimo’s friends have jokingly referred to her planning as a fourth class. They will marry in Virginia three weeks after graduation.
Joseph Styer ’14 and Wei Wu ’14 met during their freshman fall through their leadership involvement with Dartmouth’s Christian Ministry. The couple, who started dating a year later, got engaged this April and will marry over the summer. While Wu said their first few interactions were nothing special, they made it past their unromantic first impressions as they spent more time together with the Ministry.
For Wu, the eventual proposal did not come as much of a surprise. Wu said she took the relationship very seriously from the start, as did Styer.
“I didn’t really have a very good dating script,” she said. “I didn’t really have this idea of dating for fun.”
Personal challenges for Wu during her junior year put a significant strain on their relationship. The following summer, Styer and Wu’s only term apart, gave them time and space to reflect. Both agreed that ultimately their ability to overcome these difficulties spoke to the strength of their relationship.
“If we can survive that in dating, then I believe we can survive that in marriage and continue to build a relationship,” Styer said.
Wu had always dreamed of a proposal under the stars, but Hanover’s chilly April weather might have crushed that idea, had it not been for Styer’s creativity. He planned the night of the proposal as a three-part date, referencing the Trinity and the idea that all perfect things come in threes. Each section of the proposal began with Wu completing a logic-based puzzle provided by Styer.
The couple started with dinner at Molly’s, shared a dessert of chocolates and finished the evening in a room above Murphy’s used by Dartmouth students for prayer. Here, Styer guided Wu to lie back on the floor. He turned out the lights. By then, Wu said, she saw the proposal coming but didn’t understand Styer’s directions. Then she looked up.
“He’d covered the ceiling of the prayer room with glow-in-the-dark stars. He’d even followed a star map and set up constellations and everything, so it really was like stargazing,” Wu said. “At this point, I started crying.”
Styer and Wu eagerly await married life, especially the prospect of living together once they venture away from Dartmouth.
“It’s really exciting to have a space that’s not mine or his, but ours,” Wu said.
Zhenwei Mei ’14 and Zheng Zheng Tu’16, officially married in December, also said they share an excitement to move in together following graduation.
“It seems like a makeshift phase right now,” Mei said, referencing the fact that she and Zheng currently share her undergraduate dorm when he visits campus.
The two met during the summer after Mei’s junior year, when Zheng was preparing to apply to business school but had not yet applied to Tuck. The two had a mutual Dartmouth friend in Mei’s home city of Shanghai, and while they connected briefly and saw each other at a few group dinners, they only connected online this past fall, when Zheng visited Dartmouth to tour Tuck — a choice he now says was driven by his desire to see Mei again. By the end of that first visit, Mei knew she’d found someone special.
“It really felt right,” Zheng said.
Zheng officially popped the question this winter, sitting on the Game-of-Thrones-inspired ice sculpture on the Green the day after Valentine’s Day. The timing, they said, was important — getting engaged on Valentine’s Day would have been cliché. Zheng had the bell tower play their song, “All I Ask of You,” from The Phantom of the Opera. He buried the ring in the throne.
They married in a Rollins Chapel ceremony this April and over the summer, the couple will have ceremonies in Shanghai and Shanxi Province so that their extended family and friends can attend. The couple had also previously been legally married in December.
Next year, Mei plans to defer her enrollment in the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to settle into married life with Zheng, who will start at Tuck in the fall. While for the moment their married life will focus on one another, they will be adding a family member into the picture — Mei plans to bring one of her dogs to Hanover from China.
For Mei and Zheng, marriage has actually alleviated some concerns or conflicting priorities they might have felt beforehand. For example, Mei found it an easy decision to defer her enrollment to MIT, just as Zheng found it a simple choice to quit his job to move closer to Mei.
“It helped me get rid of things I didn’t know I didn’t actually need, like four months more of work,” Zheng said.
