With a Long-Awaited Kiss, ‘the Crowd Went Crazy'

New York Times

18-04-2025

Gianna Isabella Lozano and Nicholas Benjamin Perla looked forward to their April 6 wedding with the same high hopes and excitement as many engaged couples. If their sense of anticipation was above average, that was because the two hadn't yet kissed on the lips.
Ms. Lozano, 24, and Mr. Perla, 23, met in September 2021 on the way to a 5K race in Midtown Manhattan sponsored by their church, the nondenominational New York City Church of Christ. Both were members of the college ministry but in different locations. She lived in New City, N.Y.; he in Yonkers, N.Y.
'I had heard he drove some of my friends to church events in the city,' said Ms. Lozano, now a campus minister at the New York City Church of Christ's Bronx location. 'So I orchestrated a car pool.' The same friends Mr. Perla had been driving had thought the two would hit it off. They were not wrong.
In the car, 'we had a simple conversation that turned into effortless laughter,' Ms. Lozano said. 'It was an instant connection.'
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At the time, both were navigating the terrain between college and what might come after. She was soon to graduate from Manhattan University with a bachelor's degree in engineering. He was completing a bachelor's degree in exercise science at Lehman College.
For her, the 5K was less about crossing the finish line than showing up for the event the college ministry had helped organize. Mr. Perla, now a technician at an orthopedic clinic in Harrison, N.Y., was more invested in the race. 'I walked and he ran,' she said.
Their uneven pace along the Henry Hudson Parkway didn't undo a shared impression that their values and personalities were in sync. On subsequent car pools, their friends made a practice of leaving the front seat of his RAV4 S.U.V. vacant for Ms. Lozano, who was usually last to be picked up. 'They heard our conversations,' she said. 'I guess they thought we made a good pair.'
For almost a year, they saw each other only in group settings. That suited them. Mr. Perla had joined the church with his parents, Luz Zuniga and Benjamin Perla, a few years earlier to fend off a creeping sense of purposelessness and was still immersed in spiritual self-discovery. Ms. Lozano, who had been attending with her parents, Beatriz Munoz and Giovanny Lozano, since she was 7, was in what she called 'a phase of, I don't want to be in a relationship.'
'Most of my friends were starting to date, and I wanted to be different,' she said.
When Mr. Perla asked her to join him for dinner the Orangetown Classic Diner in Orangeburg, N.Y., in July 2022, he was hoping their connection would turn romantic. 'I had a growing interest in her,' he said. 'Gigi was very genuine, and she loved to let people into her life, which was something I didn't know how to do.' To him, the invitation was a date. She thought he was just asking for a more intimate than usual hangout.
That perception changed a couple of months later on a bike ride around Central Park that he had arranged. 'He was really attentive,' she said. 'I realized it was a date.' In January 2023, over dinner at an Italian restaurant in Yonkers, he presented her with a bouquet of peonies and a heart-shaped cake. 'It had red icing and said, 'Will you be my girlfriend?'' They left the restaurant a couple, their new commitment sealed without a kiss. A peck on the cheek would come months later.
The decision to forgo physical intimacy before marriage 'was just a choice we made' from the beginning, Ms. Lozano said. 'A lot of other couples kiss on the lips while they're dating and there's nothing wrong with it. We wanted to save our first actual kiss for something special, something sentimental.'
By the time they got engaged, on Sept. 14, 2024, at the Scenic Hudson RiverWalk Park in Tarrytown, N.Y., abstaining from locking lips had become a challenge.
'It's been difficult,' Ms. Lozano said, just before the wedding. 'For me as well,' Mr. Perla said.
Support among family and friends helped. Ms. Lozano's mother channeled hers into a prizewinning appeal to an audio guest book company running a wedding giveaway.
'I'm so proud of her,' Ms. Munoz told After the Tone earlier this year in her bid for the free audiobook. 'She can't wait to kiss her husband on the lips for the first time.'
On April 6, Rob Novack, a pastor at the New York City Church of Christ, put an end to the wait. At the IronSpire Complex, a banquet complex in Adamstown, Pa., he pronounced Ms. Lozano and Mr. Perla married in front of 128 guests; almost all knew their first smooch as husband and wife would also be their first in general.
When the two leaned in to make it official, 'the crowd went crazy,' Ms. Lozano said. 'People were shouting and screaming.' For the couple, one kiss proved insufficient. Before they left the altar, 'I had to kiss him again,' she said.