Guilty as charged: Like many women, I sometimes read the New York Times Sunday Styles’ section wedding announcements. I’m not so much keeping score (I don’t really care about marriage-as-status), but I am looking for inspiration in the slog for committed romantic love; at the same time, I sometimes avoid this section. There are too many fresh-scrubbed, cookie-cutter smiling wedding pictures from perfect 29-year-old couples whose fathers are investment bankers and who both attended “most competitive” colleges. In any case, every so often, the Vows column features older kindred spirits whose love stories are simply too quirkytogether to not share. Here’s one of them, and why I loved it.

1) They met on a subway, she approached him (he was reading a philosophy book), and she shouted out her email address to keep the possibility of future communication alive as she exited the car (death to all books that say women shouldn’t make the first move!)
2) He hadn’t been in a serious relationship “since the first Gulf War”: love the honesty of just putting that out there
3) The final quote: “I see beyond the nerd in him, he sees beneath the gaudy in me,” the bride said. “For the first time in my life, Jeff makes me feel fully seen, fully accepted, fully loved.”