Emily Sundberg, the writer behind the gossipy daily business and culture Substack Feed Me, matched with Jake Cohen, the head of finance at a tech company, on Hinge in 2022. At the time, she was in the middle of finishing up a documentary she was directing called The End, about an island in the Hamptons. “Jake capitalized on that and was making a lot of clever movie references in our conversation,” Emily remembers. “Our first date was the next night, and our second one was the next night. We’d lived in the same neighborhood and never crossed paths, so it was a lot of fun spending the early months of our relationship in Brooklyn together.”

The couple got engaged the day before Thanksgiving in 2024, while on a walk in their neighborhood of Park Slope. “We have a weekly routine of picking up Jake’s dry cleaning and getting pastries at Southside together,” Emily explains. “But Jake changed up the routine on this day and proposed right on our block.”

He sourced the stone with a friend whose family has a diamond business in New York, and the ring was made by a jewelry designer in London named Delaval Knight, who specializes in Art Deco designs. “My ring is the most meaningful object I own,” Emily shares. Thanksgiving was the next day, and the newly engaged couple spent it celebrating with both of their families. “It was so special—and by dessert, everyone started asking us about wedding plans,” Emily jokes. “We’d been engaged for [just] 24 hours!”

The wedding planning process was a whirlwind. “We started planning in January, and our wedding was in April,” Emily says. “My family lives on Long Island, and Jake’s family lives in Connecticut, so we wanted to do it somewhere close to the city, if not in the city.”

When it came time to select a venue, images of greenery or gardens were top of mind for both the bride and groom. “If not in a garden, somewhere outside,” Emily specifies. They explored several courtyards, secret gardens, beaches, and farms close to the city, but through a series of unexpected circumstances, the roof of Nine Orchard, a hotel housed in a historic Lower East Side landmark building, revealed itself.