They say every pot has its lid. For Moira and Dustin, that's also true of plasticware. After not one but two groups of mutual friends tried to get them together, Moira, a clinical psychologist in Cambridge, Massachusetts, brought cupcakes to a barbecue hosted by Dustin, president and CEO of a Boston-based investment firm, in April 2014."We had so much fun," she says. "At the end of the night, I accidentally left the top to one of my containers." Smitten, Dustin saw an opportunity and e-mailed Moira, offering to return it—over drinks. "It was so not about the lid that I forgot to bring it!" he admits.
Moira didn't mind at all. "We were just inseparable from that first date," she recalls. Within six months, each of them was preparing a proposal, though Dustin got there first, dropping down on one knee during a morning run. Moira said yes, but went ahead with the scavenger hunt she and her then-five-year-old daughter, Aoife, had organized to pop their own question. "In truth, my—now our—daughter won him over even before I did," she says.
The planning moved as quickly as their courtship had. They set a date (May 24, 2015) six months after Dustin's proposal and booked the first venue they toured: the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (Mass MoCA), in a restored 19th-century factory located among the rolling hills of the Berkshires. Just over a year after their first meeting, they gathered 140 loved ones for a weekend of hiking, yoga, farm-to-table fare, and a civil ceremony with vows they wrote themselves. And there was just a touch of drama, when flower girl Aoife lost the rings—momentarily—in the layers of her mother's epic gown.
Afterward, guests sipped cocktails on the patio before strolling through the art-filled galleries to a dinner that included salmon, orecchiette, and kale salad. When the couple kicked off their first dance and an excited Aoife ran over to join them, they did an unrehearsed three-person jig. It wasn't the night's only surprise. Later that evening, Dustin handed Moira a wrapped box; inside was the plastic lid, framed for posterity.
