Jason Kim Vaughn and Patrick Vaughn’s first date didn’t quite go as planned. It was 2014, and Patrick had asked Jason out after connecting on a dating app at Harvard, where Jason was on a gap year from his studies at the Graduate School of Design, and Patrick was in his first year at the School of Dental Medicine. A big snowstorm hit Boston, and they couldn’t make it to the restaurant Patrick had chosen for the date. Instead, Jason suggested they go to a cozy shabu-shabu spot nearby.
This pivot turned out to be for the best. “I remember being completely charmed as I watched him try to eat with chopsticks to impress me,” Jason shares. “So focused, so earnest, and utterly adorable that I reached across the table and taught him how to use them properly.”
After his gap year, Jason went back to finish his architecture degree, and the two embarked on a “mini-distance” relationship, traveling between the design school in Cambridge and the dentistry school in Boston to see each other. “For years we traveled back and forth between the two, finding excuses to spend time at each other’s school,” says Jason, who is an architect and artist. “I still have stacks of dorm sign-in sheets from Vanderbilt Hall, the Medical School dormitory where Patrick used to live.”
A few years into dating, they had a private engagement just between the two of them. Then, in January 2024, Patrick surprised Jason with a second proposal. “We had his two best friends visiting, and I had us all dress up for a photoshoot to celebrate their decade of friendship as a decoy. I made them do full hair and makeup, but that didn’t make him suspicious at all,” says Patrick, who is an oral and maxillofacial surgeon. “After we all got ready, we went down by the water near the Ferris wheel at the waterfront. I knelt down on one knee and asked him to marry me. He was so shocked he was speechless, but luckily, there were passersby shouting at us, ‘Say yes!’”
When it came to planning the wedding, the couple’s individual strengths made for a good balance. “I knew exactly what I wanted our wedding to look like, and Patrick knew exactly what he wanted our wedding to feel like,” says Jason. “We said I was in charge of design and he was in charge of experiences.”
The couple worked with wedding planner Sarah Swanson of Eventful Moments. They held the wedding on September 20, 2025 in Seattle, with two ceremonies at The Admiral’s House—“a traditional Western ceremony and a Pyebaek, which is a Korean ceremonial tradition,” Jason explains—and a reception at the Fairmont Olympic.
For their wedding ceremony, it was important to them to include as many family members as possible. Their goddaughters and nephews served as flower girls and ring bearers, leading the procession down the aisle. Catherine, Patrick’s older sister, officiated, and Rachel, the couple’s oldest friend, served as emcee. At the ceremony, Audrey, Patrick’s younger sister, read an excerpt from the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges.
