Hello there
On Memorial Day weekend 2011, Rachel and her lifelong friend Sarah had a hotel room in Stone Harbor and evening plans in Avalon.
Elsewhere at the Shore, Glenn was at his West Chester University buddy Bill's Sea Isle City beach house when another college pal, Paul, suggested they go out in his neck of the barrier islands.
That's how a guy from Broomall and a girl from Cheltenham ended up at the same bar: the Princeton.
Rachel and Sarah recognized Paul, whom they had met a few summers before. Introductions were made. Rachel, who is now 33, and Glenn, now 32, talked a bit inside the bar - long enough to realize one of Glenn's high school friends became Rachel's friend at Widener University's law school. And long enough for a little spark.
When everyone filed across the street to Circle Pizza, Glenn ended up sitting next to Sarah, so he talked to her more than Rachel. The town was hopping, and frequently Glenn left the group altogether to say hello to a friend.
"I thought he was nice, and he is really cute, but when we got to the pizza place, he stopped paying attention to me," said Rachel, an insurance defense attorney who now works at Deasey, Mahoney & Valentini in Philadelphia. It was getting late. Rachel was bored.
"Before I had a chance to say goodbye and get her phone number, Rachel and her friends went into a cab and vanished," Glenn said.
But Glenn, who spends his non-summer days teaching health and physical education to Russell Elementary students in the Marple Newtown School District, was not giving up.
Back home in West Chester, he searched the Facebook profile of their high school/law school friend Steve so he could send Rachel a message that Rachel still knows by heart: "You didn't think I was going to let my future wife walk out of my life and into a cab without doing some Facebook stalking, did you?"
Glenn says this was not premonition, but determination to get this woman's attention. "If I had said something ho-hum . . . she might have blown it off. I wanted to see what could happen."
After Sarah jogged her memory about who Glenn was, Rachel was intrigued by his boldness. "Future wife, eh?" she messaged back.
For a couple days, they spoke by Facebook.
"I'm not looking for a pen pal," Rachel wrote one day. "Are you ever going to ask for my number?"
Rachel lived in Fairmount then, and Glenn drove to the city to meet her at Amada. They talked over dinner and a pitcher of sangria.
"When you go on a first date, sometimes it feels like a job interview. But I remember thinking during the date and after, it felt like catching up with an old friend," Rachel said. "It was very fun, and very easy."
Glenn agrees: "Our true personalities came out immediately."
They've been together since, and in June 2013 got a place together in Bryn Mawr.
How does forever sound?
Rachel's fascination with ice skating at Penn's Landing inspired Glenn to head to the waterfront during his 2013 winter break from teaching, in search of a beautiful spot to ask Rachel a question they both knew was coming. New Year's Day would be perfect, he thought.
But five minutes after Rachel left for work the morning of Dec. 27, the phone rang.
"I was in a car accident," she told him. "I was hit by another driver."
He arrived on the scene as Rachel was loaded into an ambulance. She had multiple pelvic fractures. "I was very fortunate, all things considered," she said.
Rachel spent four days at Paoli Hospital - Glenn slept in her room - then five at Bryn Mawr Rehab. She was in excruciating pain, and had to learn to walk again.
For the first time in a long time, Rachel stopped wondering about a proposal. "I had a passing thought that it would not be anytime soon," she said.
"Ice skating was completely out of the question," Glenn said. "I put together a Plan B."
Rachel came home from rehab on an icy January Sunday. She walked very carefully, leaning on a walker, into their apartment.
"After being cooped up that long, I was just longing to be home," she remembered. She cried when leaving rehab, and again when pulling into their development.
"Smile," Glenn told her. "It's going to be a good day." That made her stop crying - it really irritated her!
Then she walked into her apartment, and saw their friends and family. "Glenn had orchestrated this sweet homecoming for me, and I started crying again over that. A few steps later, he asked me to turn around, and I saw him on one knee. It was so many emotions at once."
"We've been through many ups and downs - some times recently were way down - but there's always an up," Glenn said then. "I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Will you marry me?"
Their engagement and wedding planning gave Rachel something to look forward to during the four months of physical therapy it took her to physically become herself again.
About a month before their wedding, the couple closed on the home they are renovating in Havertown.
It was so them
They held both their traditional Jewish ceremony and a reception for 185 at the Crystal Tea Room. The bridal party walked down the aisle to an instrumental version of John Legend's "All of Me," a song Glenn loves to sing to Rachel.
Glenn's and Rachel's grandparents were dead. "We tried our best to incorporate emblems of them into the ceremony," he said. Jewish tradition calls for a plain wedding band for the ceremony, and Rachel used Glenn's great-grandmother's. Glenn wore a bracelet his grandmother had given him when he was in high school. Rachel's bouquet bore a pin that was her grandmother's.
The ceremony was held in the round, beneath a large chandelier. At the end, the couple was wrapped in Glenn's grandfather's tallit and blessed by all four of their parents.
Then it was time to celebrate.
"All that we wanted in a reception was to put on a great party for our friends and family," Rachel said. "We had a venue with great food, and an outstanding band. It was a very fun party."
Awestruck
Before the ceremony, Glenn walked toward Rachel, who waited under an archway at Philadelphia City Hall with her back turned. "She turned around, and I was able to see how beautiful she looked. And she was breathtaking," he said. Even that didn't prepare Glenn for the way he felt when Rachel's parents began walking her down the aisle, toward him. "Though we had 185 guests, it was almost like tunnel vision, where I didn't see anyone else but her."
Rachel had been wondering how Glenn would react the first time he saw her. She didn't think he'd cry, but maybe he'd smile. "The look on his face was of such shock, it just made my day," she said. "I was just really in awe of being there with him, and what we were about to do."
Discretionary spending
A bargain: The couple's band, London Bridge, gave them a winter discount, and another because the band's roster had recently changed. To top it all off, Rachel and Glenn hired a 12-piece band, but by the day of the wedding, there were 15 members, including an electric violinist, at no extra cost. The couple estimates they saved at least 30 percent.
The splurge: The couple went all out on the Crystal Tea Room itself, plus upgrades including the lighting. Their wedding coordinator did throw in an additional wash of light on the chandelier, gratis.
The getaway
Eleven days on Maui and Kauai.
Love: BEHIND THE SCENES
Officiant: Rabbi Barry Blum of Congregation Beth El-Ner Tamid, Broomall.
Venue: Crystal Tea Room, Philadelphia.
Photography: The Artist Group; New Jersey, Philadelphia, New York.
Flowers: Rhoads Garden, North Wales.
Music: Band London Bridge, EBE Events & Entertainment, Philadelphia.
Dress: By Stefan Jolie, purchased at Bijou Bridal, Ardmore.