The Tamesis
Jason King Vaughn and Patrick Vaughn’s first date didn’t go as planned. It was 2014, and Patrick asked Jason out after hooking up on a dating app at Harvard University, where Jason was studying at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and Patrick was in his first year of dental school. A huge snowstorm hits Boston and they are unable to get to the restaurant Patrick chose for their date. Instead, Jason suggested they go to a cozy shabu-shabu restaurant nearby.
This pivot proved to be for the best. “I remember being completely mesmerized as I watched him try to impress me by eating with chopsticks,” Jason shared. “He was so attentive, so serious and so sweet that I reached across the table and taught him how to use them properly.”
After a gap year, when Jason went back to complete a degree in architecture, the two began a “short-distance” relationship, commuting to see each other between design school in Cambridge and dental school in Boston. “For years, we went back and forth between the two, looking for excuses to spend time at each other’s schools,” says Jason, an architect and artist. “I still have a stack of dorm sign-in sheets from Vanderbilt Hall, the medical school dormitory where Patrick lived.”
After dating for a few years, the two of them got privately engaged. Then, in January 2024, Patrick surprised Jason by proposing for a second time. “Two of his best friends were visiting and I had us all dressed up for a photo to celebrate their ten years of friendship as decoys. I had them do full hair and makeup, but it didn’t make him suspicious at all,” said Patrick, an oral and maxillofacial surgeon. “After everything was ready, we went to the waterside near the Ferris wheel on the seaside. I got down on one knee and proposed to him. He was so shocked that he couldn’t speak. Fortunately, a passerby shouted to us, ‘Yes!'”
The couple’s personal strengths were well balanced when planning their wedding. “I knew exactly what I wanted for our wedding look Like, Patrick knew exactly what he wanted for our wedding Feel Like,” Jason said. “We say I’m in charge of the design and he’s in charge of the experience. “
The couple worked with wedding planner Sarah Swanson of Eventful Moments. They were married in Seattle on September 20, 2025, with two ceremonies at the Admiral House—”a traditional Western ceremony and a Korean ceremony traditional Pyebaek,” Jason explains—and a reception at the Fairmont Olympic Hotel.
For their wedding, it was important to them that as many family members as possible attend. Their goddaughters and nephews served as flower girls and ring bearers, leading the procession down the aisle. Patrick’s sister Catherine officiated, and the couple’s longtime friend Rachel served as master of ceremonies. During the ceremony, Patrick’s sister Audrey read an excerpt from the Supreme Court’s 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision.
