A trip to San Diego the following year for a friend’s wedding moved them closer to thoughts of marriage. But despite that happy occasion, “it had been a traumatic couple of days,” Mr. Hayes said. The presidential election had just happened, and the outcome was not the one he wanted. “I was bawling for, like, three days,” he said.

On a post-San Diego trip down the coast to Valle de Guadalupe, Mexico, in a rented car, Ms. Jampol soothed and sympathized. “He’s an emotional guy,” she said. “But it was a beautiful trip, and we learned we travel well together. I think at that moment we realized this was it for us.”

The proposal that transpired a few months later, on Ms. Jampol’s 33rd birthday, Jan. 1, 2017, offered a preview of the pageant-like atmosphere that would resurface on their wedding day.

With a cluster of the locals Ms. Jampol calls their “framily,” the couple celebrated at their favorite Newark haunt, Jimenez Tobacco, a velvet-walled cigar bar opened by a Cuban woman decades ago and now run by her sons. “For a long time it was like a speakeasy, where you’d bring your own bottle of booze,” Ms. Jampol said. “Now they’ve got a liquor license and are a little more established. But they still do Prohibition-style cocktails. And it still feels like the most amazing hole-in-the-wall.” Mr. Harris signed on to DJ for the cigar bar birthday bash. But after the first few sets, he was overtaken by an urge to make the night more meaningful.

First it took the form of a performance. The Velvet Trio hadn’t yet formed, but Mr. Harris’ bandmates in that group were on hand. He recruited them to play a few songs with him including, for a final number, a cover of the Cure’s “Lovesong.”

“Rebecca was wearing a crown and I saw how beautiful she was looking and I was thinking about how happy she made me,” Mr. Harris said. “In my head I felt like the ground became kind of holy.” As the song wound down, Mr. Harris spun around, yanked a string out of the bar’s booze-soaked carpet, got down on one knee and tied the string around Ms. Jampol’s ring finger. With the entire birthday party assemblage watching, he proposed. The answer was an instant, enthusiastic yes. “I was stunned, but I was also so happy,” Ms. Jampol said.