In the office that spring, co-workers from a different department stopped by to chat with Mariah and her team. Charlie Hammel, then 28, recognized Mariah from their Zoom meeting. Though get-to-know you calls like theirs happened at the company all the time, “I remember hers sticking out because I had a great time talking to her,” Charlie says. And, “I thought she was really cute.”
But Mariah, after making dozens of such calls, didn’t remember Charlie, and re-introduced herself. “Turns out, she had no idea who I was,” says Charlie, who laughed it off. But Mariah “was mortified,” she says — and sent Charlie a message that same day: I’m so sorry. I’d love to make it up to you and take you to coffee.
At a nearby cafe, they struck up an easy conversation. They met a second time, then a third.
“I don’t think we really talked about work, but it was a professional vibe,” says Charlie, who was raised in Watchung, New Jersey, and played lacrosse at Drew University. “We were learning more about each other.”
For Mariah, the budding friendship was just what she needed.
“He was so thoughtful,” she says. He remembered things about her that had nothing to do with work, she says, taking an interest in her crafting. “He genuinely seemed to care.”
Mariah woke up stressed about the weather — rain and heavy winds forced the ceremony to move inside, and the late May temperatures hovered around 40 degrees. Then she remembered advice from a friend — “Whatever energy you put out as the bride and groom is what your guests are going to give you back” — so “I decided to roll with it,” she says. Nicole Baas Photography
Charlie knew he was interested in her when he started to get nervous for their meet-ups. “She’s bubbly, she’s smart, she’s super-quirky in the best way,” he says. “She makes me laugh all the time.”
In June of 2022, he asked her for drinks. While it was clear there was a spark, he says, “Because of the whole work thing, I was never going to be the one to cross that line” and make the first move.
Mariah, however, had no such reservations. Getting into an Uber after their second drinks date, “She just looks at me and says, ‘Are you going to kiss me or what?’” Charlie recounts.
It was important to Mariah to have all of the friends who helped support her in her move to New York be part of her bridal party. She had 11 bridesmaids, including her two sisters. Nicole Baas Photography
The next month, the couple made their dating official, reporting it to their managers to comply with company policy.
Mariah, who says there would still be times alone in her apartment when she’d be “a puddle on the floor,” began to find her footing in the city. She leaned on her girlfriends for support, and started a weekly club where they’d share wine, needlepoint, and conversation. “It makes a big city feel a little bit smaller when you start to find your people and your places that make it a community,” she says.
Needlepoint is a very big deal in the Ward family. So much so that Mariah’s grandparents spend months creating a special gift for the husband-to-be each time a granddaughter gets engaged: a hand-crafted, leather-and-needlepoint belt bearing the new family member’s initials, presented to him in front of the entire family at Christmas. “It is a huge honor. I’ve never felt so special,” Charlie says.photographs by Nicole Baas Photography
She credits Charlie for playing the largest role.
“Charlie totally changed my New York experience,” she says. “He made it feel like home.”
She taught Charlie how to needlepoint, as her grandmother had shown her when she was 6. “He was just so game to try the things that I loved,” she says. He went on the Ward family vacation that summer, to Nantucket, and stayed up late with her two younger sisters eating popcorn and gaming the brides’ gown picks on Say Yes to the Dress long after Mariah, who likes to be asleep by 9 p.m., had gone to bed.
“Very early on, I felt like this could be my person,” she says.
Says Charlie: “We love just spending time together. If you give us a movie and a bottle of wine, we’ll have a great time.”
Charlie had five groomsmen, a combination of friends from different points in his life, from kindergarten to college.Nicole Baas Photography
They took walks in nearby Central Park, and at night she worked on crafts while Charlie did Legos. A favorite date night is a stop at a needlepoint shop in the West Village, then dinner across the street at L’Artusi, the same restaurant where Mariah spent that tear-filled night with her mom. (Mariah is knitting a hat for their favorite waitress’s new baby.)
The couple moved in together in February 2024, to a one-bedroom apartment in the building where Mariah already lived. After “negotiations,” Mariah says, Charlie got to bring five Lego sets — including a Ferrari F1 and a Star Wars Attack Cruiser — putting his 100-plus other sets into storage.
The couple chose to deliver their vows to each other privately, on a boat in Newport Harbor the day before their wedding. “It was just nice to have that alone time carved out of what was otherwise like a very busy, love filled weekend,” says Mariah. Nicole Baas Photography
On October 19, 2024, on a walk around Beacon Hill, where Mariah had lived before she moved to New York, Charlie proposed.
They zeroed in on Newport, Rhode Island, where Mariah had participated in an Irish step-dancing festival each year as a child, for their May 30, 2026, wedding, selecting waterfront event space The Bohlin for their ceremony and reception.
Both say it was important to carve out time alone. The day before their wedding, they exchanged private vows on a boat in Newport Harbor. Mariah told Charlie she was 100 percent confident in marrying him, “because of who you are as a person and who you are as a partner to me.” Charlie said Mariah “brings out the best in me; she makes me a better person.”
Mariah planned special visits home to take dance lessons with her dad for their father-daughter dance. Their song was “Isn’t She Lovely” by Stevie Wonder. Nicole Baas Photography
The next day, the couple and their 16-member bridal party took photos at The Elms, a Gilded Age mansion in Newport, before an early-evening ceremony at The Bohlin in front of 150 people. Mariah’s childhood baby sitter, who the bride considers to be like an older sister, officiated, under a cloud of flowers suspended from the ceiling. Her aunt read an Irish blessing.
A band played for the ceremony and reception. The newly married couple walked down the aisle to Ray Charles’s “Hallelujah I Love Her So,” a favorite of the jazz-loving bride. The bride’s sisters, and Charlie’s younger brother, toasted them.
The couple choose “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You,” by Frankie Valli, for their first dance. South Shore-based Buds Floral Design created a lush canopy of flowers suspended from the ceiling. The couple and their guests were awed by the “flower cloud.” Nicole Baas Photography
Mariah — with Charlie’s help — crafted much of the decor: the table numbers, ring bearer pillow, raw bar banner, and the “bride” and “groom” signs affixed to their chairs were all needlepointed.
In the future, the couple plans to move to Massachusetts — “I can’t wait to come home,” Mariah says — and to start a family. She hopes to one day repurpose those table markers, borrowing an idea from social media: Each number, and an accompanying photo, will announce how many months old their baby is, in updates posted online.
Mariah and Charlie plan to move to Massachusetts one day. Nicole Baas Photography
Read more from The Big Day, The Boston Globe’s weddings column. Recently married or engaged? Apply to have your wedding featured.
Carrie Simonelli is a multiplatform editor at The Boston Globe. Reach her at carrie.simonelli@globe.com or on Instagram: @csimonelliedits.