It took Emily Regina Swarts six weeks after matching with Tyler Harris Swiggett on the dating app Hinge, in early November 2021, to finally respond to the message he initially sent.
“I was just busy,” she said. “I got lost in the kerfuffle of the holidays.”
Ms. Swarts, 32, had recently moved back to New York from the Hawaiian island of Kauai after nearly one year, having escaped the pandemic there with friends, two of whom were colleagues from Google. All were working remotely.
When she finally replied to Mr. Swiggett, 33, in mid-December, Ms. Swarts was already back in Kauai again for six weeks for the winter.
He didn’t seem to mind the lag in communication or the fact that she would be away for six weeks. “I was very excited,” Mr. Swiggett said. “I very much remembered her.”
He suggested a coffee date. She agreed to have one after she returned in February.
But, he said, “in order to stay on her radar, I thought we should do a FaceTime date.”
“I was on my couch, she was on the beach,” Mr. Swiggett said of their Dec. 17 FaceTime meeting. “The chemistry was strong. It definitely warranted a second date.”
The time difference between Kauai and New York made real-time communication challenging. So, aside from a few more FaceTime calls, the two left voice messages on WhatsApp and hand wrote letters and texted photos of those letters to one another.
“Every night, I hand wrote a letter and sent her a picture of it,” he said. She would reciprocate writing one back for him to wake up to every morning.
“The letters were this routine that we got into that was really sweet. That’s how we fell in love really fast,” Ms. Swarts said. “Before the New Year, I was like, ‘Do you want to come to Kauai and stay with me?’”
They were both excited and nervous about his trip.
“It felt like we just had three weeks of emotional foreplay,” Ms. Swarts said. “My only worry was that I wouldn’t like the way he smelled. I can’t control biology.”
But the minute she saw him, she said, “I ran up and jumped into his arms and kissed him. We held hands the entire drive home. I love the way he smells. We just fit together.”
One week after Mr. Swiggett’s weeklong visit, “We just decided via FaceTime that we were boyfriend/girlfriend and fully exclusive,” Ms. Swarts said. “We fell in love in Kauai.”
Two weeks after that, in mid-February, Ms. Swarts returned to her home in Fort Greene, Brooklyn.
“Our first date back was on Valentine’s Day,” Mr. Swiggett said. “We had beef stew at my place on the floor.” The next night, they went out to Chinese Tuxedo in Chinatown.
That night, “we cocreated six commitments together,” Ms. Swarts said. “Keeping our relationship playful; communicating with compassion; supporting your dreams; keeping you safe; staying faithful; and always love you,”
“This is when we knew it would last,” she added.
They later added two more commitments and shared them as a part of their wedding vows. “To put our family first,” Mr. Swiggett said. “And, to be your life partner.”
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In July 2022, they moved in together in the West Village, where they lived for two years. “We intentionally wanted to move to a place that was new for both of us,” Mr. Swiggett said.
Not quite a year later, Ms. Swarts quit her job as a user experience program manager at Google to start Fleurvoyant, a “floral botanical design studio” in a space she shared with a painter in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan.
“I am also an herbalist and believe in the healing power of plants and flowers,” said Ms. Swarts, who is from Orinda, Calif., and has a bachelor’s degree in rhetoric from the University of California, Berkeley.
Mr. Swiggett, who grew up in Madison, Conn., is a director at Hines, a global real estate developer and investment manager. He has a bachelor’s degree in environmental geography from Colgate University and an M.B.A. from the Stern School of Business at N.Y.U.
In July 2023, Mr. Swiggett proposed to Ms. Swarts in Central Park after grabbing breakfast at Cafe Gitane.
One week before their wedding, the couple moved out of their West Village apartment and headed for the West Coast. With their belongings in storage, they will officially move to Venice Beach, Calif., in September.
The two were married Aug. 2 by Gurion Kastenberg, a friend of Mr. Swiggett who was ordained by the Universal Life Church for the occasion. The wedding was held in the backyard of Ms. Swarts’ family’s friends’ home near Muir Beach, Calif., after which attendees walked through a wooded path to the reception at the Pelican Inn.
“We chose Muir Beach because it’s where my parents have lived for 11 years and it’s a special place for us because of that,” Ms. Swarts said.
The couple included excerpts from their first love letters to one another in the program, and “read open love letters to each other at the wedding,” Ms. Swarts said. “Everyone was bawling.”
Mr. Swiggett said, “It was my magnum opus love letter for sure.”
