Bogath Weddings and Events | Wedding Planner

Happy Valentines Day! xoxo! It’s the perfect day to launch the Bogath Wedding and Events website along with our first Bogath Weddings and Events blog! I’m Jeanne Coon-Bogath, a wedding and event planner serving south and central New Jersey,  specializing in Long Beach Island. I am located in beautiful and historic, Barnegat, NJ. Bogath Weddings and Events was born out of a love for weddings and details that are centered around creating timeless memories with your family and loved ones that celebrate your love and honor traditions. 

Our Blog-Birthday!

Richie and I are dropping my daughter off for a sleep over and will have a romantic afternoon/evening (we could only get into our all-time favorite restaurant for a 3:30 seating). We are heading out to The Octopus Garden, in Cedar Creek, NJ. It’s a beautiful restaurant and is a treat for us to go to. We save it for really special occasions.

Our first date* (really not our very first date, I’ll explain in a minute. . .) was at The Octopus Garden. We shared the garlic clams (his idea, so no need to worry about the garlic-after-effects) and I ordered the pan-seared scallops (I’m a scallops lover). OMG. They are to die for! But, why isn’t this really our first date? Well…here’s the story of how we met.

How Richie and I Met

Richie and I met on Match.com. And by the time we met we had both become rather jaded by the online dating process. Dating had begun to feel like a second job without a pay check and no vacation time. In fact, we found out later, that we were both waiting for our memberships to expire so that we could take a break. I was sick of guys who wanted to text forever (and never got around to actually asking you out on a date or even speaking to you) and he was sick of women asking how much he made. Such a stereotype, right!?

We started talking (by this point, I had started vetting potential dates by telling them that they had to call and speak to me after the first few text messages–that I wouldn’t text) a few weeks before we were able to meet. We just couldn’t get our schedules to mesh. Finally, we arranged to meet at Doyle’s Pour House, in Barnegat, NJ. A cute Irish pub. Easy, predictable, and the perfect site for a first date–public, affordable, no crazy foods, and pool tables. We were going to “grab a drink” and maybe dinner. Those of you who have done dating online, know exactly what this means, it was a fact-finding date: Find out if the online profile matched the real thing. Find out if the person was what they said they were. Find out if they could hold a conversation. Find out if there is any connection.

Well, we had a good time. The drink turned into dinner, dinner turned into dessert, and dessert turned into a walk to the bay front dock in Barnegat, where Richie’s first attempt at a suave kiss was rudely interrupted by a teenager yelling to his friends that “We gotta leave, I need to get to Wawa for some blueberry pop tarts!”

Our First “Real” Date

It was a Monday, and Richie wanted to set up a second first date before we parted ways. I wasn’t available until Friday. I had not mentioned Tuesday (the next day) as an option, which did not get overlooked by Richie, who pounced on the opening in my schedule despite it being less than 24 hours after our first date. I was game. Who am I kidding, he was normal, could hold a conversation, funny, handsome, and seemed to have possibility. Remember, I was a pretty jaded dater. This was the date he planned on pulling out the big guns. And his big gun: The Octopus Garden. Fancy, delish, and romantic.

Our real first date, the one where we connected was technically our second date. But it was the date where we realized that the other person could be the real thing. We laughed, we held hands, we laughed more. And, so The Octopus Garden is our special place. We’ve added a few locations to our special places list: the municipal dock, the scenic overlook by my house, the Rams Head Inn (where we got married). But it’s the Octopus Garden where we like to go to celebrate most often. And it’s there that we will celebrate tonight: our first Valentines Day as husband and wife.

I hope that you enjoyed today’s blog about how Richie and I met and that you will begin following my Bogath Weddings and Events blog. I plan on filling it with “How Tos” and lots of helpful information on planning your next event, wedding, baby/wedding shower, anniversary, or vow renewal. If you are interested in learning more about me, check out this fun blog post (I wrote it a few years the one you just finished), “Ten Things You Didn’t Know About Me.”