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(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5761516&forum_id=2/#49177568)

“I had this feeling that I needed to get back to my love,” said Ms. Assaf, referring to Dr. Dean William Prince, whom she had met two weeks earlier. “Some people believe that gut feeling is your ancestors. The inner voice is so strong when you listen to it.”

She walked five miles barefoot through the mud until she reached a pickup point for a shuttle to Reno, Nev.

“I kept saying the Jews have done harder things,” said Ms. Assaf, who is Jewish.

Before heading to the airport, she stopped at Walmart to buy shoes. When she landed in Los Angeles, Dr. Prince picked her up from the airport and the two immediately began living together. At first, they stayed in hotels and Airbnbs that they rented for short periods. Then, that November, they moved into a rental apartment in the Venice neighborhood of Los Angeles.

“I couldn’t get enough of her,” said Dr. Prince, a general surgeon with San Fernando Valley Cancer Center who practices at Valley Presbyterian Hospital in the Van Nuys section of Los Angeles. “There’s just so much to know about this person. How can I get it all as fast as I can? I was 35, and you go through so much from a dating standpoint, so you know what you want at that age. I wasn’t looking to play games.”

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Ms. Assaf and Dr. Prince laugh with their rabbi while standing in a yard under a huppah.

Ms. Assaf and Dr. Prince were set up by his brother-in-law, but they lived on opposite coasts, so nothing came of it until she was in Los Angeles for a wedding and they happened to match on Hinge.Credit...Annie McElwain

Dr. Prince, now 37, was born and raised in Los Angeles. He has a bachelor’s degree in sports and exercise from the University of San Francisco and a medical degree and a master’s of public health from St. George’s University in Grenada.

He decided to become a doctor because his grandmother, Ester Tepper, a Holocaust survivor who died in 2017, told him he should.

Out of 12 grandchildren, Dr. Prince said, “my grandmother singled me out and told me I would be a doctor.” He added: “I respected her so much from her story of survival. My whole life is because of her. I had this destiny to be who she wanted me to be.”

Ms. Assaf, 35, recently left her role as director of communications for OSEA Malibu, a skin care company, to start a healthy candy company. She is also an adviser to Prima, a CBD wellness company she co-founded in 2018. Before starting Prima, Ms. Assaf created Cannabis Feminist, a cannabis community for women that operated primarily on Instagram.

She was born in Chicago and grew up in San Rafael, Calif., before moving to New York, where she received a bachelor’s degree in public health, documentary film and social activism from the New York University Gallatin School of Individualized Study. In 2016, Ms. Assaf earned an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.

In January 2023, after a failed merger, Ms. Assaf and her business partners decided to sell Prima to keep it alive.

“It felt like sudden death, like my company had a heart attack,” Ms. Assaf said.

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Two envelopes and a place setting with a personalized menu sit on a table.

Ms. Assaf and Dr. Prince wrote each of their guests a letter, and she sealed each one with a red-lipstick kiss.Credit...Annie McElwain

A few months later, Ms. Assaf began working as a consultant at OSEA Malibu, and in April 2023, during the company’s team retreat, a friend of hers, Ryan Weiss, asked if she was single. He wanted to set her up with his brother-in-law, Dr. Prince.

A short while later, Mr. Weiss showed Ms. Assaf’s Instagram to Dr. Prince. “Ryan said, ‘I met this amazing Jewish girl, she lives in New York, she seems like she’d be a great match for you,” Dr. Prince said. “I was like, She’s super-cute, but then I thought, This is never going to work out. I had just moved to L.A. and was starting my life.”

A few months later, on Aug. 18, 2023, Ms. Assaf was in Los Angeles for her brother’s wedding when she opened Hinge and saw that Dr. Prince had liked her.

“I realized he was the guy, but he didn’t know I was the girl,” Ms. Assaf said. “My first words were, ‘Wow, it’s fate. Ryan’s been trying to set us up.’”

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When Dr. Prince called her later that day, Ms. Assaf invited him to meet her, her three younger siblings and two of their fiancées at Upstairs at the Ace Hotel, a rooftop bar that is now closed. He agreed.

“Ryan had talked her up so much, and I’d been dating in L.A. without success,” Dr. Prince said. “I really trust my brother-in-law and his intuition.”

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The couple walk along a cobblestone aisle outside, lined with potted plants and guests cheering on either side.

Weeks before meeting Dr. Prince, Ms. Assaf made a list of qualities she wanted in a husband. After they met, she said, “I knew he was the one.”Credit...Annie McElwain

At the bar, he bought Ms. Assaf and her family members tequila shots before the two of them found a spot to talk alone.

Two weeks before meeting Dr. Prince, Ms. Assaf had written a letter to her future partner — telling him she had spent five years preparing for him and thanking her ancestors — as part of an exercise from a self-help book she was reading, “Calling in ‘the One.’”

“I’d had an experience where I settled for a love I ultimately didn’t want,” Ms. Assaf said, referring to her first marriage, which ended in divorce in 2019.

This time, she wanted to be more intentional, so she made a list of qualities she wanted in a husband.

“I wrote such specific things,” she said, including “loves his mom so much” and “loves fitness and loves pizza.”

When they met, she realized how aligned Dr. Prince was with everything she wanted.

“We had a deep conversation about life, our passions, and I actually kissed him,” Ms. Assaf said. “We swapped phones that night and saw that we only save voicemails from our grandparents. That was the moment I knew he was the one. His dad is a New Yorker and his mom is Israeli, and my mom is a New Yorker and my dad is Israeli. It felt like two puzzle pieces.”

Dr. Prince said he felt as if he had known Ms. Assaf forever. “From the onset, it was so warm and loving and intuitive, it didn’t feel like a first date,” he said.

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A close-up of a two-tier white wedding cake covered in fruit and real flowers.

The couple’s wedding cake was made using raw sugar, at the bride’s request, and was covered with flowers and fruit.Credit...Annie McElwain

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A close-up of a white pavlova decorated with real red flowers.

A Pavlova was served at the after-party.Credit...Annie McElwain

The next week, Dr. Prince took Ms. Assaf on a date every single day, each time to one of her favorite Los Angeles restaurants, including Karma Sushi, Wabi on Rose, Night + Market Sahm, Dudley Market and Gjusta. At the time, Dr. Prince lived with his parents, Bati and Brian Prince, so every night, he booked a different hotel room for himself and Ms. Assaf.

Dr. Prince introduced his parents to Ms. Assaf over dinner during their second week of dating.

“I was like, ‘I’m very serious about your son,’” Ms. Assaf said.

“They’d never seen me so stir crazy about a girl before,” Dr. Prince said.

One year after they met, on Aug. 18, 2024, Dr. Prince woke up, went downstairs and found a long love letter from Ms. Assaf that brought him to tears.

“I had the ring for a week prior, and I was so excited to give it to her,” Dr. Prince said. “I was planning a beach picnic proposal, but I was so taken aback by that letter that I felt like I had to propose right then and there.”

After Ms. Assaf said yes, they went to Erewhon to pick up sandwiches and kombucha, and then headed to Venice Beach to stage a proposal with photos and videos to share with family and friends.

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A black-and-white photo of the bride, left, being kissed on the cheek by a man with white hair. Four guests sit in front of them.

The bride received a kiss from her grandfather, Sidney Silver, during the reception.Credit...Annie McElwain

Ten months later, on June 12, 2025, Ms. Assaf proposed to Dr. Prince at Dudley Market.

“I pulled him out of his seat, got down on one knee and put the wedding ring on his finger,” Ms. Assaf said.

“Jess is so quirky and cute and thoughtful like that,” Dr. Prince said. “She always finds opportunities to make a joyful moment.”

Dr. Prince and Ms. Assaf were married on July 19 by Rabbi Steven Z. Leder of the Wilshire Boulevard Temple in front of 80 people at Gjusta, a bakery and cafe in Venice.

Ms. Assaf and Dr. Prince joined Wilshire Boulevard Temple specifically so Rabbi Leder, who is planning to retire later this year, would officiate their wedding.

“I love his writings on grief,” Ms. Assaf said of Rabbi Leder, who has written four books. “He coined this idea that grief is unused love with nowhere to go. I always turned to him in moments of darkness, so to have him officiate is really meaningful to me.”

Ms. Assaf walked down the aisle to an acoustic guitar performance of “One Love” by Bob Marley. Thirteen people gave speeches, including siblings and parents of the bride and groom; Mr. Weiss, who set them up; Sidney Silver, Ms. Assaf’s 93-year-old maternal grandfather; and Gloria Prince, Dr. Prince’s 93-year-old paternal grandmother.

For the after-party, Ms. Assaf and Dr. Prince rented out the Rose Room, an event space on Venice Beach, where they hung poster boards of Ms. Assaf and Dr. Prince’s exchange on Hinge onto the walls, along with her text conversation about Dr. Prince with Mr. Weiss.

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A poster of a text message hung on a wall says: “Hi king! With Melissa Palmer in Austin so thought of you. I’ll be in LA all of August so if your bro in law is still single I’d love to meet him!” alongside a heart emoji.

For the after-party at the Rose Room near Venice Beach, the couple hung posters of their Hinge messages and her texts about Dr. Prince on the walls.Credit...Annie McElwain

They rented a sound system from a collective called Robot Heart, which sets up a camp at Burning Man, and several of their friends were asked to D.J., including Samantha Urbani, Henry Pope and Drew Gold.

As a nod to Ms. Assaf’s cannabis ventures, they included a bar stocked with weed gummies from Rose Los Angeles and Pax, cannabis prerolls from 710 Labs and vapes from Pax. The couple also served a psilocybin-infused mezcal.

Their friend Ben Gleib closed the night with a roast.

“The whole day and night felt like a big cuddle puddle, and, of course, we did have an actual cuddle puddle at the after-party,” Ms. Assaf said. “One friend said it felt like she was at Burning Man, which is the highest compliment we could ever have gotten.”

On This Day

When July 19, 2025

Where Gjusta, Venice neighborhood of Los Angeles

Dress Intuitively Ms. Assaf went to one bridal wear appointment and found it “uncomfortable and performative,” she said, so she asked her sister to go to a vintage store in Brooklyn, Desert Stars Vintage, and try on a few dresses. “I said, ‘That’s the one,’ and she shipped it to me,” Ms. Assaf said.

Sugar-Free Ms. Assaf doesn’t eat refined sugar, so she asked Rose Wilde to make a cake covered in flowers and fruit like kiwi, orange and strawberries, as well as a Pavlova for the after-party, both using only raw sugar. “I’m a health freak,” Ms. Assaf said.

Sealed With a Kiss Rather than using name cards at dinner, Ms. Assaf and Dr. Prince wrote each of their guests a letter. Ms. Assaf kissed every single one with lipstick. “So many people at the dinner were part of our love story,” she said.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5761516&forum_id=2/#49177584)