Unions
Eva Galanes-Rosenbaum and Scott Lawrence first met in an AOL chat room, of all places. It was around 1997, and both spent their spare time playing medieval fantasy games like “Dungeons and Dragons,” and sought out other fans of the genre online to play with.
They didn’t begin dating until years later, when Galanes-Rosenbaum was a student at Reed College in Portland, and Lawrence took a job nearby to see if the relationship had potential. By the end of her college years, she was living with him.
A few years later, she decided to obtain a master’s degree at the London School of Economics and Political Science. “I was thinking I was probably going to go into an international career and maybe stay in London or live elsewhere in Europe, and I think at that point I was less certain about our relationship and whether I wanted it to continue,” said Galanes-Rosenbaum. But over the course of that year abroad, she realized she missed him. A lot.
“It became really clear that I was not going to end this relationship at all,” she said. She moved back to the U.S. in 2009 and they’ve been together ever since. The couple now live in her childhood home in San Francisco’s Castro District, where she spent her early years and attended Congregation Sha’ar Zahav.
Galanes-Rosenbaum, 32, works as a media and polling analyst for ReThink Media, which provides media technology and communications training to nonprofits.
Lawrence, 39, grew up mostly in Southern California and is a user interface and design engineer at Business Wire.
For a long time, marriage was not something to which they aspired. “We talked about it off and on over the past several years, but sometimes it just didn’t feel like the right time,” said Lawrence. “And sometimes we looked at it politically and felt it’s not equal for everyone to marry in the United States, so maybe it doesn’t mean as much to us because of that.”
But by the summer of 2014, things were changing dramatically in terms of LGBT rights, and they began to discuss getting married in earnest.
On a trip to Portland, the couple bought rings from a jeweler whose vintage rings had caught their eyes many years ago.
And then, while visiting Lawrence’s family for Thanksgiving in 2014, he took Galanes-Rosenbaum on a drive to Malibu.
“I pulled over on the side of the Pacific Coast Highway in the moonlight, and with the beautiful lights of Santa Monica in the distance, I got on one knee and proposed,” he said. “She said yes and then we went for doughnuts.”
They celebrated with Lawrence’s family once they returned.
“Eva is so compassionate and she thinks a lot about the decisions she makes,” said Lawrence. “And she is always thinking about what will make the world more as it should be.”
“Scott teaches me things all the time,” said Galanes-Rosenbaum. “We’ve been together a very long time, and he still surprises me, and we make each other laugh a lot.”
The couple were married by a friend on April 8 on a balcony at City Hall. They stood beneath Galanes-Rosenbaum’s grandfather’s tallit, before almost 100 guests.
“I love weddings at City Hall,” said Galanes-Rosenbaum. “I love the feeling of being part of San Francisco’s deep, rich history, and it’s a building that needs no decoration, no embellishment. I love being there on a Friday and watching other people getting married. You see all these brides running through the halls. It’s wonderful and very celebratory.”
During the ceremony, they read the text of their ketubah to each other rather than vows. Galanes-Rosenbaum designed the typography and border of the ketubah.
The bride got henna for the occasion, including a giant hamsa on her back. “I think of the hamsa as a really lovely interfaith spiritual symbol associated strongly with Judaism, but not only Judaism,” she said. “A lot of my current work is on fighting Islamophobia, so the messaging about interfaith understanding became especially meaningful to me.”
The wedding reception took place in the evening at the Coffee Bar in the Mission District. The couple are regulars there, and it made perfect sense when they found out it could be rented as an event space.
“We’re not big drinkers, so we spend a lot of time in cafes and we take coffee really seriously,” said the bride. Added the groom: “We had beer and wine and an open bar and coffee and espresso drinks were also included. A lot of people took advantage of the open espresso bar.”
Unions features a recently married couple with an interesting story. If you want to share your tale, or want to nominate a couple married within the last year, contact [email protected].