It was the kind of love story that Geneviève Elizabeth Wheeler had chronic at the end of her first novel in 2023, “Adelaide”: American Girl fell in love with the British lawyer with an indistinguishable accent following a paralyzing break and a diagnosis of bipolar disorder.
Five months before matching the hinge with Iain Bruce Naylor, employment lawyer, Ms. Wheeler had finalized the epilogue of her novel. The protagonist, Adelaide, who faces many of the challenges that Mrs. Wheeler had met as 20 years in London, including a rupture that devastated him, ties the knot with Brennan tender and good heart.
“I think I did it with magic and writing,” said Wheeler about Mr. Naylor’s entry into her life, a joke that she had manifested it.
The couple initially connected to the dating application on September 6, 2020, when Ms. Wheeler lived in the Pimlico district of London and Mr. Naylor was in Kennington. Ms. Wheeler, struck by a photo that Mr. Naylor had published with his face taking a look through a wooden cutting of a donkey, her roommates had found her future husband.
But both could not meet in person due to pandemic restrictions. Instead, they have spent the next six months and more to stay in touch, first in the application, then through text, on a semi-reagular basis.
Their conversations were light. For part of that time, Ms. Wheeler lived with various family members in the United States. The jokes “did not feel forced,” said Naylor. “It’s just part of my day.”
In April 2021, Wheeler received her COVVI-19 vaccinations and began to enjoy a renewed social life when she returned to Great Britain after months in the United States. She had recently decided to leave her day job as a senior content manager of the Ad Tech Company Index Exchange after having sold her novel to the press of Macmillan St. Martin’s in an agreement of two books.
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While the London locking protocols began to loosen, the two finally had their first meeting on April 11; It lasted nine hours. In accordance with pandemic regulations, they planned an outdoor meeting in Green Park, one of the royal parks of London.
Things started with a fun turn. Ms. Wheeler and Mr. Naylor had joked in previous conversations on the ritual of “glaze”, which involves a surprising part the other with a bottle of Smirnoff ice cream, a malt alcohol drink, which they must then chuge immediately while being perch on one knee.
“I think we would have established that the icing would be part of the day,” said Naylor. He and Ms. Wheeler showed up in the park and came to fristed.
Subsequently, Ms. Wheeler said: “We sat for ages, we speak and laugh at cute dogs, then we head to the streets of London to another park along the river, right next to Westminster, where we were curled up on a park bench and talked about others.”
Only two weeks and about five dates later, life has changed course. Ms. Wheeler learned that because of complications with her British work visa, she had 90 days to leave the country once she finalized her notice period on July 2, 2021. Mr. Naylor was not imperturbable. “We had already done the long distance things before meeting us,” he said.
Ms. Wheeler, 32, spent the first years of his life in Lawrenceville, NJ, Paris and Beaconsfield, England, before moving to Ocala, Florida, at the age of 12. She holds an advertising baccalaureate from the University of Boston and obtained a master’s degree in marketing communication at the University of Westminster in London.
In addition to her work as a novelist, she is director of communications at the London office in Nexxen, an advertising technology company.
Mr. Naylor, 38, holds a baccalaureate and a law degree from the University of Leeds and took his legal practice at the University of Nottingham. He was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, and grew up in Leicester, England.
In September 2021, Ms. Wheeler returned to the United States, where she spent several months staying with her family and friends in New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts and welcomed Mr. Naylor during her very first trip to America. The couple traveled from Massachusetts to Florida in New York, visiting some of Ms. Wheeler’s relatives along the way.
At the beginning of 2022, Ms. Wheeler moved to Paris on a new visa, where she started working on her next book, “Lina & June”, which took place in the fall of 2026.
That year, Ms. Wheeler, who had been diagnosed with a bipolar II disorder after a suicidal episode in 2019, began to feel her mental health difficulties to reappear. Loneliness and lack of mental health care in Paris were difficult. But his condition only worsened in Great Britain.
In the fall, she returned to London and moved into a new apartment in Queen’s Park with Mr. Naylor. Wheeler suffered another suicidal crisis after she was unable to obtain critical prescription drugs through the British national health service for more than a month. After two attempts in one week, she was transferred to a psychiatric room, where she stayed five days in October 2022.
Mr. Naylor, who was aware of the diagnosis of Ms. Wheeler from one of their first dates, remained regularly by her side, visiting the hospital every day and communicating with his friends and family in the United States.
“It’s a frightening thing to let someone enter, because you don’t know how he will react,” said Wheeler. “But Iain was just so present and so stable and solid when I was very literally, or almost literally, I collapsed.”
Experience solidified his intuition that Mr. Naylor was, in fact, the person he wanted as a life partner. During one of his visits to the hospital, he referred to a line of Adelaide, ensuring Ms. Wheeler that he loves “each ounce of light and darkness in it”.
“It was one of those things you are never really in question,” Naylor said about the support he provided to Ms. Wheeler during this period. “This is exactly what I was always going to do.”
Today, with the support of her drugs, his therapist and her loved ones, Ms. Wheeler’s symptoms are much more manageable.
On November 15, 2023, Mr. Naylor proposed. Under the guise of having received a hotel credit through work, he reserved a room at the Standard, London – where he and Mrs. Wheeler had spent their first anniversary as a couple – the day before a getaway scheduled in Rome.
Neither of them wanted a public proposal, and for weeks, Ms. Wheeler remembers whether it would be the evening when Mr. Naylor asks the question. Shortly after arriving at the hotel, Mr. Naylor asked Ms. Wheeler to go out on the balcony. While the back of Mrs. Wheeler was shot, Mr. Naylor kranged, accidentally holding the Harry Neal jewelry box upside down.
Because the couple had received more than a dozen wedding invitations for 2024, they chose to organize their own celebration the following year. They chose on September 6, 2025, exactly five years after their hinge match, marrying nearly 190 guests at the Battersea Arts Center in London. Michael Stead, deputy director general, officiated. The couple hired London rejoicing events as a marriage planner.
The couple, who described themselves as socially aware, appreciated that the Battersea Arts Center works as a non -profit organization. And they organized the food and drinks they served to be prepared by the charitable organization Clink, a restaurant in a work prison.
Reception has personal keys as well as literary touches. Swizzle Sticks at the bar paid tribute to the King Charles Spaniel rider of the couple, Nellie (who also made a brief appearance); Place cards on the theme of luggage tags have referred to the love of the duo for travel.
The tables were named after some of the couple’s favorite books, and the two made the chronicle of the origins of their love story, their proposal and more in a newspaper simulation entitled The Newlywed Times.
Instead of launching petals, the niece of Mr. Naylor, 9 years old and the 5 -year -old nephew, launched confetti that Ms. Wheeler had made from Adelaide pages using a heart -shaped punch.
“During a large part of my life, I thought that love – romantic love, at least – was synonymous with sacrifice, loss and pain,” said Wheeler in her wishes. “That without this burning injury, there could not be any passion, or affection, or both. Then you are – compassionate, kind, clumsy – who said so clearly, so immediately, that I had a bad mistake.”
This day
When September 6, 2025
Or Battersea Arts Center, London
Change tunes After throwing the “Mystery of Love” by Sufjan Stevens for about a minute, the tone of the couple’s first dance changed when the Beyoncé tube “Crazy in Love” made the impulse through the speakers, as Mrs. Wheeler had always considered. At that time, she snatched a detachable blue and white tulle skirt from Etsy who was attached to a mini-Lulus mini-red, which makes an affordable party outfit. The dress she wore during the ceremony was also from Lulus. It cost him about $ 175.
Cultural fusion To honor the roots of Georgia of the maternal grandmother of Ms. Wheeler, who died in 2010, the couple served southern dishes, notably with effiloche and macaroni and cheese, while Mr. Naylor leaned in his Scottish heritage by carrying triple traditional and participating in a dance of Ceilidh. He also put on the jacket and the vest that his father wore during his own marriage in 1982. In addition to champagne, the offerings during the time of the cocktail included sweet tea and popular Scottish Scottish Irn-Bru.
If you have suicide thoughts, call or send an SMS 988 to reach the national suicide prevention rescue or go to Speakekerofsuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources.
