A Blossoming Weekend Romance

Bryan Lavery, 36, originally hailing from central New York state, and Jeffrey Kummerlen, 41, originally from Cleveland, Ohio, will celebrate ten years together this month. The two share a home in Houston’s Independence Heights, and met while Bryan was living in Tampa and traveling with the city’s gay softball league to compete in the Buckeye Classic.

“On the final night of the tournament, I was out with my team and bumped into Jeffrey in a bar,” Bryan says. “I passively knew the bartender, and I saw Jeffrey talking to him. When he walked away to the restroom, I asked the bartender who he was, he said, ‘Oh, that’s Jeffrey. If you buy him a shot of Jäger, he’ll just love you forever.’”

Drawn to Jeffrey’s bald head and broad shoulders, Bryan bought a shot of Jägermeister and waited for him to return to his spot at the bar so he could introduce himself.

But the question of who really made the first move is a point of contention.

“When he walked over, he stood right next to me, but we didn’t acknowledge each other,” explains Jeffrey. “I grabbed his butt, and my roommate also grabbed his butt right after I did. Bryan flipped around and said something to my roommate, and I thought, ‘Okay, he’s hitting it off with him,’ so I just backed off a little bit.”

“So I guess he made the first move,” Bryan admits with a grin, “but it wasn’t a strong enough move to be noticed.”

During the evening, the handsome duo chit-chatted, but because Bryan had to fly back home the following morning, their first date wouldn’t be until five days later when Bryan flew back to Cleveland. “He met me at the airport, and we did a weekend-long date together,” Bryan adds. “It was the typical visit—these are my places, and these are my friends.”

The charming pair made a long-distance relationship work across the next nine months by flying to see each other for weekends once every two weeks. That level of commitment helped both of them begin to think that they had found “the one.”

“We were dating long-distance, and we were both thinking ‘Something has to happen. We’re not going to continue doing this,’” Jeffrey reveals. “Really, I was going to move. He wasn’t going to move to Columbus, Ohio. That was when I first knew he was the one, and that I’d have to make a massive life decision.”

Bryan first knew Jeffrey was the one after the first time Jeffrey said “I love you” to him. Imagine a bustling, noisy departure lane outside the Cleveland airport. Bryan gives Jeffrey a hug goodbye and starts to walk away when he thinks he hears Jeffrey say “I love you.”

“I said, ‘I love you, too.’ It was so easy to say it back, and it caught me off guard,” Bryan explains. “That made me realize he was the one.”

The couple agrees that their favorite thing about the other is their differences. “My favorite thing is that we are totally opposite personalities,” Jeffrey says. “That makes it work because we could never be with ourselves.”

“We don’t have a lot that we directly share in common,” adds Bryan. “We’re very much yin and yang. I’m very type A. He’s very type Z, if there is one of those. As much as I get frustrated at times that he is so opposite, and he doesn’t have that sense of urgency that I have, it is very grounding and provides a very good balance and home base for me.”

When it came to popping the question, Jeffrey proposed during a vacation in Costa Rica. “We took a horseback ride for two hours into the middle of the wilderness to see a waterfall. That’s where I popped the question,” Jeffrey says. “But the funny thing is, after it happened, I reminded Bryan that when I kneeled, I didn’t say anything. And then he didn’t say anything either, but just nodded. So the question was never actually really asked out loud because we were both just in the moment.”

“I was star-struck,” Bryan adds. “We were walking out on this rock, and then I realized he was kind of far behind me. Well, come to find out, he was getting the ring out of his shoe, and I didn’t realize it. But as I stepped up on this rock, it all hit me. I turned around, he had caught up, and he was kneeling. I cried and shook my head Yes. He never asked. I never said yes. It was a lot of nothings, but also a lot of something.”

The couple were married by their close friends Stephanie and Russell Logan on May 3 at the Hotel Playa Fiesta in Puerto Vallarta. “It was better than I think we could have imagined. We ended up with 130 guests for a five-day destination wedding,” Bryan recalls. “It was great because you rent the whole resort.”

They were already familiar with the location because their friends Beaux Broach and Aaron Wallace were married there. “Because we went to our friends’ wedding, we knew what to expect,” Jeffrey adds. “The venue is great because they help plan everything out, and then they facilitate it for you.”

For Jeffrey, his favorite part of their wedding was the ceremony itself. “I didn’t want it to take too long. I wanted everybody to have fun and party,” he says. “But then when we got to that part, that was absolutely my favorite part.”

Bryan’s favorite part was the love he felt from their guests. “I really enjoyed the speeches. We had one speech per night,” explains Bryan. “Jeffrey’s best man gave a speech that was probably my favorite part.” That speech included the pair receiving a clock stopped at the time they shared their first kiss after saying “I do.”

Bryan and Jeffrey offer sincere praise for Lindsay Burgess at Hotel Playa Fiesta. “You can tell that she loves her job. You see her there the entire weekend of your wedding, and she’s checking in and mingling with the guests,” says Bryan.

The couple also point to their officiants as superstars. “They came from a very conservative religious lifestyle,” explains Bryan. Despite their upbringings, they have created an inclusive family with children that identify as gay, straight, and nonbinary. “We chose them because we want our relationship to be like theirs. Forget what everyone else says is supposed to be and what’s not supposed to be. They’ve been together 20 years, they found what works for them, they’re evolving, they’re adapting, and they’re making it work. That’s what we want to emulate.”

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