Ariel Figueroa and Nathan Baker at their wedding reception. Photo / Krista Schlueter, The New York Times
When Ariel Figueroa met Nathan Baker at a mutual friend's wedding reception that she crashed, she wasn't looking for a boyfriend. After reuniting in New York, that changed.
When it comes to decision making, Ariel Ester Figueroa believes in acting first and apologising later.
"I very much function under the concept of, it's better to ask for forgiveness than permission," said Figueroa, a fourth-year student at New York Medical College.
While this philosophy may seem wrong for the operating room, where Figueroa, an aspiring surgeon, expects her career to lead her, it has served her well in her personal life. It's what made her crash the party where she met Nathan Alexander Baker.
In March 2016, Figueroa, 25, attended the wedding of her friends Nick and Stephanie Ruud in Berkeley, California. She hadn't been invited to the reception. But when the ceremony ended, she found she was not ready to go home.
"I was seeing a lot of old friends, and all of a sudden it was time for the reception, and I was like, 'Oh, can I join?'" she said. "There were extra seats, so I just sort of wormed my way in."
By the time the festivities wound down, she had sealed her reputation for stamina on the dance floor and introduced herself to a handsome, familiar-looking stranger: Baker. She had seen his picture on mutual friends' Facebook pages in the San Francisco Bay Area, where both grew up.
"I went up to Nate and said, 'Hi, we haven't met, but I've heard about you,'" she said. When she told him she would be moving to New York in a few months for medical school and could use help navigating the city, they exchanged phone numbers.
Figueroa and Baker, 28, of Harlem, are members of the nondenominational International Church of Christ. Figueroa grew up in Fremont, California, and attended the Alameda branch with her parents, Samuel and Irma Figueroa, immigrants from Honduras, and two younger siblings, Naomi and Samuel David Figueroa.
Baker grew up in Foster City, California, and went to the San Mateo branch with his parents, Al and Glenda Baker; an older sister, Toccara Baker, lives in London. The church connection accounted for Baker's familiarity to Figueroa — both were in teen ministries whose social gatherings sometimes overlapped. A three-year age difference likely prevented them from meeting.
"When I was a sophomore in high school, he was a freshman in college," Figueroa said. "I had multiple friends who were in college and knew him and had crushes on him."
He had good looks and an impressive education. "They would talk about this cute guy at Stanford," she said. Baker graduated in 2013 with a degree in international relations and a minor in Chinese.
Her friends also liked Baker's civic-mindedness. In high school, at St. Ignatius College Prep, he was president of the Association of African-American students and a member of the Association of Latin American students, though he is not Latino.
An urge to represent the underserved is familiar to Figueroa. "A big part of my pursuit of medicine is wanting to give back to countries like Honduras," she said. Her parents came to the United States in 1988. Her father earned a doctoral degree and became a software engineer; her mother is a real estate agent. But their middle-class life did not dim her awareness of their country's poverty.
In 2015, after she finished college at Azusa Pacific University, she spent a semester at a camp for impoverished children in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, reinforcing her passion for medicine. In high school and college, she didn't mind staying home Friday and Saturday nights to study.
"I was really focused on the medicine thing," she said. "I didn't envision dating until I was in my 30s. And my parents are immigrants. At the dinner table they were like, 'You're not dating until you get your Ph.D.'"
Falling in love in her early 20s with Baker, a product designer for Daily Harvest, a New York-based company that delivers organic meals and smoothies, was an unexpected twist. When Figueroa moved to Valhalla, New York, in August 2016 for medical school, Baker was living in Washington Heights with a friend from California, Ben Middlekauff.
Initially, Baker thought Figueroa wanted to meet him in New York so she could reconnect with Middlekauff, who had been a church friend and her prom date.
"I was assuming they were going to get together," he said, which accounts for what Figueroa recalls Baker's "solemn" behaviour when the three got together for a welcome-to-New York walk on the High Line. At the end of August, though, when she was settled into her new apartment, it was Baker she texted with a request to hang out.
Their first date, a picnic in Central Park with friends — both joined New York branches of the International Church of Christ and now attend Big Apple Church in Manhattan — took place on September 13. "By then, we had a phone call that opened my eyes to how awesome she is," he said. "She has all this energy and love for people."
In the park, Figueroa let loose the fun-loving side that prompted her Berkeley wedding crash. She taught everyone the rules of sardines, a kind of reverse hide-and-seek. Later she invited a Muslim family to join a game of spike ball. "That encapsulated Ariel and her love for people," Baker said. "Everything took off from there."
Not that Figueroa was entirely sure she wanted it to. Baker's move to New York in 2013, just after Stanford, was preceded by his parents' move to Manhattan. His mother is a marriage and family therapist; his father works in mergers and acquisitions.
When Figueroa met them for the first time, at church in April 2017, Baker didn't know how to characterise his relationship with Figueroa. He felt uncomfortable introducing her.
"I was kind of mad at her when she came to church," he said. "It was a weird time. We had been dating, but we weren't official." Baker wanted boyfriend-girlfriend status. He thought they were headed that way when, early in 2017, she wrote him a series of letters in Spanish and English after he told her he wanted to learn Spanish. "They were super-heartfelt letters," he said.
But when he told her he wanted to date only her, she got nervous. "I was in my first year of medical school," she said. Figueroa expects to graduate in May and will begin a residency in June. "I was afraid. I didn't know what it means to be a girlfriend." She had never had a boyfriend.
In Baker, though, she knew she had found her ideal version of one. "I remember thinking, 'Oh my gosh, his eyes are so full of faith and love and kindness,'" she said. She didn't want to lose him to ambivalence. In May, she agreed to an exclusive relationship.
Figueroa's sister, Naomi Figueroa, who lives in San Francisco, was thrilled. "Honestly, I was overjoyed," she said. "Ariel had always had crushes, but it was hard to find a guy who understood her and could match her ambition."
Figueroa remembers telling her father about Baker over the phone. "I was like, 'Hey, Papi, I met this guy I really like.' The whole time my mindset was like, I'm not supposed to be doing this right now. I wasn't supposed to be dating." But her father had no objections. "He just said, 'Is he nice to you?'"
One of Figueroa's fondest memories of falling in love with Baker was at his 25th birthday party, in November 2016. Instead of inviting friends to celebrate him, he threw what he called a "More Birthdays" party at Industry City in Brooklyn.
"It was a watershed moment when Philando Castile had been murdered in his car," he said. "I was thinking a lot about my identity, and I saw my birthday as an opportunity to change the narrative, to focus on preserving life." The party raised $3,000 for organisations fighting police brutality.
Figueroa felt a swell of admiration that night. "I'm kind of embarrassed about this, but when he gave a little speech onstage, I thought, 'Wow, I wouldn't mind standing next to that guy,'" she said. "It showed me he knew how to put his thoughts into action."
After two years of dating that included a November 2018 visit to Fremont for a bilingual Thanksgiving with Figueroa's parents, siblings and grandmother Teresa Espinoza, Baker reinforced that impression.
On June 8, 2019, their friends Ricardo and Marines Medina invited them to dinner at Sugarcane, a restaurant in Brooklyn, for Medina's birthday. Toward the end of the evening, Baker excused himself to the restroom. But instead of going there, he handed a waiter a note to give to Figueroa. The note Figueroa unfolded contained a series of clues, using lyrics to favorite songs like Ed Sheeran's "Perfect," about his whereabouts.
When she found him in a garden near Jane's Carousel, standing in a ring of pink and purple flowers with their friend Ross Lippencott playing guitar, she froze. When he got down on one knee and presented her with a diamond solitaire ring, then asked in Spanish if she would marry him, she couldn't stop smiling.
Then, as she said "Si," came another surprise: 80 friends and family members, including Baker's parents and Figueroa's sister Naomi, who Baker had flown in from California, popped up from hiding places on a nearby rooftop, waiting to cheer them.
Lippencott played I'm Yours by Jason Mraz as they swayed for their loved ones. It was a song they would dance to again on Feb. 8, when they were married before 220 guests at 26 Bridge, an event space in the Dumbo section of Brooklyn, by the Rev. John Markowski, a minister at Big Apple Church.
Figueroa, in a white tulle dress with floral lace appliqué and a sweeping train by BHLDN, walked with her father down an aisle scattered with pink and white rose petals to a flowery altar where Baker, in a velvet burgundy jacket and matching bow tie, awaited. Nine attendants each, including Naomi Figueroa and Middlekauff, stood to either side.
Markowski began with praise for both sets of parents. "Your children are simply outstanding," he said. Before he stepped aside for the couple to read vows they wrote themselves, he urged them to continue to tell the truth in love.
Baker spoke first. "I love your raw, authentic, unfiltered joy for life," he told the bride. "I promise to give you my all, until my lungs give out."
Figueroa followed. After moving to New York, she said, "I couldn't deny my feelings for you. I fell in love, head over heels. And I love you more and more each day."
When Markowski pronounced them married, they shared a kiss that raised cheers and whistles around the room. Of the 220 guests who stood to salute them, 180 had been asked to stay for a reception. Figueroa would have understood if a few who hadn't been invited decided to stick around.
When: February 8, 2020
Where: 26 Bridge, Brooklyn, New York
Serenade: During the ceremony, performed in English with bursts of Spanish, guests were surprised by a performance from Big Apple Church's a cappella group. The singers let loose with a flawless rendition of How Great Thou Art.
Honduran accents: Ten of Figueroa's relatives flew to New York from Honduras for the wedding. Nods to their culture included Honduran dulce de leche for guests to take home and dining tables set with maracas painted with the names of the bride and groom. Dinner included ropa vieja, or braised beef brisket and fried sweet plantains.
Sweet to salsa: Figueroa's sister sang the Ed Sheeran song Perfect for the couple's first dance, accompanied by a cousin playing acoustic guitar. Figueroa and Baker then salsa danced to a Marc Anthony tune before a DJ took over, playing Latin and American pop music.
Written by: Tammy La Gorce
Photographs by: Krista Schlueter
© 2020 THE NEW YORK TIMES
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