Vermont has always been a significant, go-to getaway for Lucia D’Agostino Foulkes and Nicholas Spencer Dorf, particularly a tiny stone chapel in the woods at the Trapp Family Lodge in Stowe, Vt.
On Aug. 1 they were married outside the chapel, where Mr. Dorf had also proposed in February 2019 while they were snowshoeing through the trail-network on a day pass. Bryson Wilson a childhood friend of the groom, who received temporary authorization from the State of Vermont for the ceremony, officiated.
“We thought we would like to elope because of the circumstances,” Ms. Foulkes said. They originally planned to get married July 25 at Oaks Pioneer Church in Portland, Ore., but after the coronavirus outbreak they postponed celebrating there until 2021. “We didn’t want to wait another whole year to make it official.”
So she emailed the wedding coordinator at the Stowe lodge, who told her as long as they booked a room they could go ahead with a simple ceremony outside the chapel at no extra charge.
From June to mid-August the couple, who live in Arlington, Mass., worked remotely while staying at various places in Vermont.
“We love it up here,” said Mr. Dorf, 29, a research attorney at the Land Court division of the Massachusetts Trial Court in Boston. He graduated from Duke.
Ms. Foulkes, 32, is the associate director of the master’s program in international law at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Medford, Mass. She graduated from Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, Calif.
They met in 2012 at law school when they both started out in Section 3 at Boston College, from which each received a law degree, he cum laude, and from which she also received a master’s degree in higher education.
“He was pretty quiet,” said Ms. Foulkes, who quickly realized “he’s pretty quietly and secretly the funniest person I know.”
They became good friends as they hung out in the same group, and Mr. Dorf said that he was “definitely bummed” when he learned she had a boyfriend.
By the time the annual law school ski trip to Killington, Vt., rolled around second semester, she was no longer in a relationship. And aside from being avid skiers — he grew up skiing in Stratton and Killington and she on Mount Hood in Oregon — they did a good bit of dancing together that weekend at the Wobbly Barn Bar, where they also had their first kiss.
Their first date was Valentine’s Day at a French restaurant in Harvard Square in Cambridge, Mass.
“Pretty quickly after we started dating we both realized we were a perfect match,” he said.
They realized they were also polar opposites in some ways.
“I could be hot-tempered and pretty assertive,” she said. “Nick is a lot more measured and introverted. He grew up in Fairfield County in Connecticut. He went to Duke and had a preppy background. My mom lived on a commune in Montana in the ‘70s and ‘80s. My parents had chickens in the front yard. My dad brews kombucha and makes infused liqueurs.”
She met his family in Connecticut over that summer. He visited hers in Portland the summer of 2014, and described their outing to Breitenbush Hot Springs as the “deep end of Oregon culture.”
“I forgot it was clothing optional,” she said. “We kept our suits on. He was very wary at first during the day. When we went out after dark, we swam without our suits and he felt very liberated.”
After they graduated they had a long-distance relationship for a year while he clerked for a judge in Brattleboro, Vt., and she lived in Cambridge working at the Fletcher School. They moved in together in 2016.
“She makes everything I do with her so much more fun and meaningful,” he said.