At First, They Were Up in the Air

When Bridgette Danielle Summers went on a trip to the Hawaiian island of Kauai in February 2018 to celebrate her mother’s 60th birthday, her focus was only on spending time with family.

But when Andrew James Wicks showed up to Sunshine Helicopters, an aerial tour company, at the same time as Ms. Summers and her group, her mother soon had other plans.

Each helicopter tour sat six people, and Ms. Summers’s group, which included her mother, father, sister and brother-in-law, was only five. So the tour added Mr. Wicks, who was visiting the island from Houston by himself, to their ride.

“My mom kind of took care of it for me and started chatting him up,” Ms. Summers, 33, said. “I think she secretly was hoping we would magically fall in love.”

Her mother convinced the two to take a photograph together under the Sunshine Helicopters sign before the flight took off, and they later made small talk while in the air. Once they were back on the ground, though, Ms. Summers and Mr. Wicks, 32, parted ways without exchanging numbers.

That evening, Ms. Summers and her family went out for dinner at Tahiti Nui, their favorite restaurant on the island. When they walked in, they noticed a familiar face at the bar — Mr. Wicks was sitting by himself, enjoying a drink on his final night on the island.

“We walk in the door and my mom immediately sees him and starts yelling his name,” Ms. Summers said, with a laugh.

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Ms. Summers sat at the bar next to Mr. Wicks, and the two talked until the restaurant closed. Her family then invited Mr. Wicks to come back to the house where they were staying, and the group played cards late into the night. After the rest of her family went to sleep, Ms. Summers and Mr. Wicks stayed up, talking until the sun rose.

The next day, while driving to the airport, Mr. Wicks said he felt a pang of regret.

“I didn’t want to leave,” he said. “I felt this urge of wanting to stay and wanting to get to know her better.”

The pair kept in touch sporadically and, in May 2018, a work conference brought Mr. Wicks to Chicago, where Ms. Summers lived at the time. While there, he took her out for sushi. Before the meal was over, Ms. Summers suggested that Mr. Wicks extend his trip through the weekend. He agreed and they spent the next few days exploring the city together.

“It was all just so easy and fun, and it just felt so natural,” Ms. Summers said.

A few weeks later, Ms. Summers visited Mr. Wicks in Houston, and before long they were dating and meeting up every chance they had.

That September, Ms. Summers moved to New York. By the following September, Mr. Wicks had moved there, too.

“We’d see each other and all would be right in the world, and then we’d go our separate ways for another weekend, and I’d just be sitting in my house wondering, ‘What am I doing here,’” Mr. Wicks said of his decision to move closer to Ms. Summers.

In July 2020, the couple bought a home together in Austin, Texas, where Ms. Summers, who graduated from Cornell, works as the director of investments for Dovetail + Co, a local hospitality investment firm. Mr. Wicks, who graduated from the University of Houston, works as the director of capital procurement for Pattern Energy, a renewable energy developer in Austin.

Mr. Wicks proposed to Ms. Summers in September at her parents’s home in Trout Lake, Wash. The couple returned to Hawaii for their wedding, which took place Dec. 5 at the Olowalu Plantation House in Lahaina. Miloš Balać, a friend of the couple who is a Universal Life minister, officiated in front of 75 guests, who, per local travel restrictions, had to either self-quarantine, test negative for Covid or show proof of vaccination if they were visiting from out of state.

“It was perfect,” Ms. Summers said of their celebration.

Of the bride, the groom added, “Bridgette has this extraordinary gift of intelligence and empathy and charisma and beauty, all rolled into one.”