The couple were engaged on March 11, 2020. Covid cut-in on JD’s plan to propose to Liz in Paris, surprising her on her way back home from a trip she was on to London for her MBA. Calling a pretty cool audible, JD took Liz to Sea Island, where JD’s family spends a lot of time, and JD popped the question – and got the right answer – on a beautiful day at the beach.

The couple were originally planning an April 2022 wedding, to be held at the Duke Chapel. Liz went to Duke and JD went to nearby and rival North Carolina Chapel Hill – but the couple did not meet then. They met in Boston in 2016. Each had moved there after graduating from college, and on Liz’s first night in town, she went out with her sister, Lindsay, who also lived in Boston, to what Liz describes as “a gross dive bar,” called The Red Hat. JD was there… the two sparked…and they began dating. Two years later, Liz got into the Business School at Duke, and the couple were long-distanced…but JD got into the Business School at UNC a year later…and the couple were reunited in North Carolina – although again at rival schools. …As Covid continued, the couple realized their 200+ person plan for the Duke Chapel was, at best, a distant possibility and, having been together for over four years, they decided they just didn’t want to wait anymore.

Liz grew up in Bedford in a big white house just off the Bedford Green, went to school at Lindsay, and her family are members at Bedford Golf & Tennis. So, on a weekend trip to Bedford in the Fall of 2020, about six months after they were engaged, the couple decided to change their plans and put together a much smaller, family-only wedding at the Walker’s family congregation, St Matthew’s Church. “I came up to Bedford and my mom and I basically planned the entire thing in the course of a weekend!” Liz recalls with a smile.