In August 2019, Anna Freimuth, the daughter of Matthew Freimuth, was unofficially wed to one of her stuffed animals, a plush pink dog that has no name. Mr. Freimuth and his then-boyfriend, Adam Rogers, performed the ceremony, which was held on the back deck of a rented house in East Hampton, N.Y. Mr. Freimuth and Mr. Rogers were also the de facto planners: They bought flowers for the occasion, and they put together a playlist for post-ceremony dancing. The faux nuptials were held at the request of Anna, then 7.
“I think that’s when we both realized, ‘Oh we both need to get married,’” Mr. Rogers said.
At that time, Mr. Freimuth and Mr. Rogers had been dating for more than a year. They had connected through the dating app Bumble in July 2018, then met for dinner at a restaurant on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Mr. Freimuth, 45, is a partner at the law firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher; Mr. Rogers, 34, is an actor and dancer whose performing credits include the Broadway shows “Chaplin: The Musical,” “Cinderella” and “An American in Paris.” Some couples might have found the distance between these two professions difficult to bridge. Not Mr. Freimuth and Mr. Rogers — their date lasted more than three hours.
“I love and have always loved theater, so I was very interested in hearing about what that life was like,” Mr. Freimuth said. “I don’t know why Adam would have been interested in corporate law, but he seemed to be.”
A few dates in, the budding relationship was put to a test. Mr. Rogers took a role in a production of the musical “Sweet Charity” in Chicago, which would move him out of town for three months. “I was very nervous to tell Matt because I was like, ‘It’s going to be the end of the relationship,’” Mr. Rogers said.
It wasn’t. While they were apart, they video-chatted each morning and night. They spoke before and after each of Mr. Rogers’s performances. And they bonded in person: Mr. Freimuth got a work assignment that required him to spend chunks of time in Chicago, which he did about every other weekend. Before one performance, he sent Mr. Rogers a text message asking how he should introduce himself to a friend of Mr. Rogers who he’d been seated next to in the audience.
“Tell her I’m your boyfriend,” Mr. Rogers replied.
A few months after Mr. Rogers returned to New York, Mr. Freimuth introduced him to his two elementary school age children, Anna and Bennett, who Mr. Freimuth has from a previous marriage. Mr. Freimuth hadn’t introduced his children to Mr. Rogers early on, he said, because he “wanted to make sure that I was introducing them to somebody that I thought would be around for the long haul.” So when the four of them went out together to eat burgers in Brooklyn, it was a reflection of the seriousness of the couple’s relationship. Mr. Rogers recognized that.
“It’s no longer just a relationship between me and Matt,” Mr. Rogers remembered thinking, “it’s a relationship between the four of us.”
Mr. Freimuth proposed in September 2019. The two were married in the backyard of their new home in Branford, Conn., on June 12, 2021. Frederick More, a friend of the couple who became a Universal Life minister for the event, officiated in front of about 50 guests.
Mr. Freimuth’s daughter, Anna, was the flower girl.