The wedding of
Lylyan and Benjamin
Our Story
Ben's Version
Lylyan's Version
Hi everyone! Ben here, the groom. I will be telling you my version of the beautiful story of how Lylyan Fragoso Pimentel, and myself, Benjamin Meier Wilson met. (I promise to be as unbiased as possible and stay PG-13 rated…) Let’s begin. It was one starry night on top of the Himalayan Mountains when I locked eyes with my beautiful, future wife…. Wait a sec, wrong story! It was May 7th, 2022, at my sister’s wedding in Foz do Iguaçu, right in front of the majestic waterfall, where I locked eyes for the first time with my future wife. I approached Lylyan and some of my sister’s friends and started a conversation. I wish I could remember the first words I had said so I could tell our kids one day, but I cannot for the life of me remember, funny how that happens. Anyway, the flames were fanned later that evening as I saw Lylyan in her iridescent, sparkly dress, sitting by herself as I presumed, she was resting from exhausting herself on the dance floor. Her long, profound black hair reflected the stage lighting as I approached her. I asked her, “Are you okay? Can I get you anything, maybe a drink?” And she replied, “Just 3 kids and a house please, thanks.” (Just kidding, she did not say that! It was more, “No, I am fine, thank you.”). With this slight introduction, we conversed with one another until Lylyan asked to kiss me, after debating whether she should or not because I was her friend’s brother…. This kiss solidified our initial flame, and we subsequently exchanged WhatsApp contacts. This was not enough for me, so I stopped by her hotel and exchanged one last, goodbye kiss before leaving for Santiago, Chile the next morning for a post-wedding family trip. After going back and forth with one another on WhatsApp as two curious, smitten people do, I grew fonder of Lylyan. I knew she was different. With each inquisitive question, I grew more and more captivated by this beautiful woman from Northeastern Brazil. I became so struck, I made a life-changing (slightly wine-induced) decision in Mendoza, Argentina. I thought to myself, “When is the next time I will be down in South America?” So, with determination, passion, and a little Mendoza Malbec, instead of journeying to my final city on our family trip, Buenos Aires, I bought a new flight to… São Paulo! I was so nervous, yet beyond excited and so sure of my decision, surer than I had been of anything in my life. Now, I hoped Lylyan would take this as a romantic surprise and not some weird, hopeless gesture. With my luck, she did! (Of course, she had to tell her friends to remain on standby as she went out with me). We shared a romantic dinner my first night there that led to an amorous weekend that felt like years. With a bittersweet goodbye, I shared one last kiss with Lylyan from outside her lab before she waved to my uber on its way to São Paulo International airport on that Sunday. I thought this would be goodbye. (Insert funny story about Ben being stuck in São Paulo traffic for multiple hours, tearing up while food vendors were selling food here). My Uber driver thought I was a weird gringo. In the unthinkable, a job opened at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital in the lab of my brother-in-law (thank you Christian and Becca for moving to Seattle for this to happen). As I did not want our flame to end, we kept messaging on WhatsApp. With this newfound knowledge, I told Lylyan and she decided to apply and…. got the job! She moved up here a few months later in late September of 2022, and we officially started dating after we exchanged ‘I love you’, capping October 8th, 2022, with a poem I wrote her. Now…. we kind of did the next few parts backwards. We could not contain our love and eloped, having our ‘first wedding’ at a small chapel in Northside, a whimsical, fun neighborhood in Cincinnati, Ohio. We were married on January 7th, 2024, by a man I like to call the ‘Parrot Pastor’, as he was not only a man of faith, but one who rescued…. parrots? Lovely guy. Even though we had done this, I still wanted Lylyan to have a beautiful engagement ring and for us to have our “will you marry me” moment. So, over the next year, I plotted. My mom, my stepdad and I were going to visit Recife to see Lylyan’s family around her birthday, June 8th, of 2025. This was the moment! Having kept the ring a secret up until the moment Lylyan saw a massive box sticking out of my pocket next to her birthday cake table and her happy father behind said table, surrounded by her family, I professed my love for her in Portuguese. Then, I got down on one knee, and asked the question, “Will you marry me?” (In Portuguese of course!) With an embrace that felt like a lifetime, a kiss, and her father crying behind us more than I had ever seen before, we were engaged! And that brings us to here and now… our Brazilian wedding!
Hi everyone! Lylyan here. Now that Ben has told his very cinematic version of our story, let me give you mine. I like to think our story began with an astronomical butterfly effect (or rather, a very long bus ride). First, you need to know how I met his sister. Rebecca and I met back in 2017 during an internship I did in Johnson City, Tennessee. That same year, she met Christian, the Brazilian guy she eventually married (spoiler alert!). We became friends, but after I moved back to Brazil, we lost touch for a while. It wasn't until she and Christian visited São Paulo years later that we reconnected. During this entire time, I only knew Becca had siblings from their travel stories, but I had never actually met Ben. Cut to 2022. I was living in São Paulo and planning to attend Rebecca and Christian’s wedding in Foz, some 650 miles away. Flights were expensive and I was broke; I was seconds away from staying home until, at the very last minute, I found a ticket for a sixteen-hour overnight bus ride. I thought to myself, "Sure, that seems reasonable." Little did I know that this questionable transportation decision was about to change my life. Fast forward to the wedding day, May 7th. I was on a mission to grab a caipirinha when I stopped to say hello to some people and realized this handsome gringo standing between me and the bar: “Hi, I’m Ben. Nice to meet you. What is your name?”, he said (there you go, Ben. Now you know what to tell our kids!). Meanwhile, my internal monologue was a bit more focused: “Okay... cute... but also... where is my drink?” Later at the reception, we finally had a chance to talk. I quickly realized that Ben was incredibly sweet and very polite… perhaps a little too polite? So, I decided to help move things along and suggested we step outside for a quick, let’s call it, smooch, despite the minor ethical dilemma of kissing my friend’s brother (for the record, she gave me her blessing... eventually). A couple of weeks later, Ben surprised me with a detour to São Paulo. I’ll admit I panicked for a good two minutes; my friends were strictly on standby just in case he turned out to be a stalker. Luckily, he was just incredibly romantic. We spent three wonderful days together, but when he finally boarded his flight, we both genuinely thought that was the end of our story. As it turns out, life had one more plot twist saved for us. I got a job in Cincinnati (thanks for the referral, Christian!), moved to the U.S. and suddenly, the distance between us disappeared. We grew closer, naturally fell in love, and eventually moved in together. During our first visit to Brazil as a couple, Ben met my family and had a whole plan to ask my parents for their permission to marry me (he is old fashioned), which he did all in Portuguese! (Thank you, Google Translate). Shortly after, we eloped in a beautiful, small ceremony with his parents, my family video calling, and the parrots as our witnesses. But Ben still had one more surprise up his sleeve. On my birthday in June 2025, he staged a "proper" proposal in front of my family. He had been practicing his Portuguese and read a beautiful message he had written, though he accidentally used the plural for ‘you” in Portuguese and asked: "Will you all marry me?" We just played along, but I guess Ben is officially engaged to me and my entire extended family! What started with a sixteen-hour bus ride, a few smooches, and a bold surprise visit turned into the greatest adventure of my life. I am so happy to finally celebrate the rest of this story with all of you.
