Nothing Messy About Their Love Story

Aspen Matis said she was turned off by Daniel Jordan Weingart after he stayed with her for a week in October 2016. The two had never met before.

Ms. Matis, now 34, lived in a 350-square-foot, one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village and was taking undergraduate classes at Columbia. “I had just gotten divorced and often opened up my space to friends and acquaintances to combat my constant loneliness,” she said.

Mr. Weingart, 36, was a houseguest because he was dating Ms. Matis’s friend, Tory DeOrian, a makeup artist whom she had met that June while on vacation in San Francisco. “I invited her to visit me in New York,” Ms. Matis said. Three months later, Ms. DeOrian arrived with Mr. Weingart in tow.

Mr. Weingart was messy, she said, and his belongings were all over her tiny home. “I was relieved when they left,” Ms. Matis said.

The sentiment was mutual. “I felt like an imposition because the space was so tight,” Mr. Weingart said.

Ms. Matis and Ms. DeOrian stayed in touch and also traveled together, including a trip to the seaside town of Pescadero, Calif., in late June. They loved the destination and made a return visit in December, this time with Mr. Weingart, who was still dating Ms. DeOrian. “It was a great trip, and we had many happy moments swimming in the wild waves together,” Ms. Matis said.

On Oct. 14, 2017, Ms. Matis received a call from Mr. Weingart, who relayed through tears that Ms. DeOrian had died in her sleep of a heart attack at the age of 25. An autopsy later showed that the cause was an undiagnosed enlarged heart.

Wanting to offer support, Ms. Matis, who was still living in New York, checked in on Mr. Weingart weekly after Ms. DeOrian’s funeral. During one conversation, she spontaneously asked if he wanted to take a road trip to Pescadero from Los Angeles, where he was at the time, in Ms. DeOrian’s honor.

“I said yes right away,” Mr. Weingart recalled.

Their romantic attraction was borne on that getaway. “We talked nonstop on the drive there and talked nonstop when we were there,” Mr. Weingart said.

The conversations delved into their careers and their fond memories of Ms. DeOrian. “I don’t know how it happened, but one night, we were cuddling on the couch, and it was clear that there was something there,” Mr. Weingart said. He wanted to kiss Ms. Matis but didn’t. “I felt like I was betraying Tory,” he said.

With the five-day escape coming to an end, Ms. Matis invited Mr. Weingart to a cousin’s bat mitzvah in New York three weeks later. “I said yes before she could finish asking me and cut her off with a kiss,” he said.

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Mr. Weingart, who grew up in the Los Angeles suburb of Northridge, is an independent filmmaker and legal recruiter who established his own company, Guidelight Legal Recruiting, earlier this year. He attended Boston University. He released his first movie, on YouTube, “Full Head Floyd,” in 2022, about navigating life in isolation during the pandemic. He was the director, producer and lead actor.

Ms. Matis, a native of Newton, Mass., near Boston, is an author who has published personal essays, including about being diagnosed with autism when she was 33. She has also written two memoirs: “Girl in the Woods,” about her solo hike from Mexico to Canada, and “Your Blue is Not My Blue: A Missing Person Memoir,” about the 43-day disappearance of her then-husband when she was 23.

Ms. Matis graduated from the New School in May 2022 with a bachelor’s degree in liberal arts and is currently enrolled in a psychology master’s program at the University of San Francisco. Her previous marriage ended in divorce.

Mr. Weingart’s and Ms. Matis’s courtship continued for six years after their Pescadero trip. Neither had a permanent home at the outset — she eventually moved out of her Greenwich Village apartment — so they traversed the globe, staying in Airbnbs in places like Paris, Boston and Venice.

They eventually settled in an apartment in San Francisco’s Presidio Heights neighborhood, where they still live.

“It was clear at some point along the way we were going to get married,” Ms. Matis said.

Their proposal happened on June 15, 2022, in their “happy place,” as they described it: Pescadero. “We took a walk on the beach where we had our first kiss, and I stopped, grabbed Aspen’s hands and asked if she would spend the rest of her life with me,” Mr. Weingart said.

“I screamed ‘yes’ through my tears,” Ms. Matis said.

On July 27, the couple wed before 85 guests at the Villa at Ridder Country Club in East Bridgewater, Mass. The officiant was Kelly Sullivan Walden, a hypnotherapist and dream expert who was ordained by the New Seminary for Interfaith Studies.

At the reception, Mr. Weingart and Ms. Matis slow danced to “To Call You Mine,” a song about their love story by singer-songwriter Jessica Gélinas, which Ms. Matis commissioned her to write for Mr. Weingart as a wedding gift.