Jennifer M. DeCoste-Lopez ’09 and Cesar J. Lopez ’09

Although Jennifer M. DeCoste-Lopez ’09 said that she and her husband Cesar J. Lopez ’09 were looking forward to being married, they were not looking forward to the wedding ceremony.

“I’m not the kind of person who grew up saying ‘This is what my wedding is going to be like.’ I was kind of dreading it,” DeCoste-Lopez said one afternoon in the Quincy Grille.

“But it turned out to be so much fun,” she continued with a wide smile aimed at Lopez, who was seated next to her.

The two were married in the bride’s hometown of Richmond, Ky., on August 23, 2008—a date they said they picked because it was the only one that worked with their schedules of working in their labs, studying for the MCATS, and DeCoste-Lopez’s brother’s start date for his freshman year at Transylvania University.

The ceremony displayed a fusion of the bride’s and groom’s disparate cultural backgrounds. Because Lopez’s family is Catholic and primarily Spanish-speaking and DeCoste-Lopez’s family is Protestant and English-speaking, the wedding alternated between Spanish and English with the aid of both a local Spanish-speaking priest and DeCoste-Lopez’s pastor.

“People seemed to like it,” she said with a laugh. “At least that’s what they told us.”

Lopez, a chemical and physical biology concentrator from San Jose, California, and DeCoste-Lopez, a biology concentrator, met their freshman year when they were both housed in Thayer on the fifth floor.

A friendship soon blossomed out of their shared love of playing pranks. But it was not until their sophomore year that the couple began dating. By the following summer—when they were both participating in the Harvard College Program for Research in Science and Engineering—they were discussing marriage.

Lopez asked DeCoste-Lopez to marry him when she came to visit him during intersession the next year. The two traveled to San Francisco where Lopez planned to propose at Ocean Beach near Golden Gate Park. When they arrived, DeCoste-Lopez began writing messages in the sand.

“She kind of played right into it,” Lopez said. “So I said ‘Okay, I’m going to write you a message now, and I’ll call you when I’m done.’”

In the sand, he wrote, “Jennifer, will you marry me? Love, Cesar,” to which Jennifer exclaimed, “Oh my God, yes,” through tears of joy.

The couple is conducting research this upcoming year at the Longwood campus as they apply to medical school, which they plan to attend together.