After college, Jasmine Smith moved back to Tampa, where she was raised but hadn’t spent much time in years. She was focused on rediscovering her hometown as an adult for the first time.
“I needed to find my community in Tampa,” she explains – which she did with GrownGurl, a Black lesbian social club that organized local events. In March 2010, she attended one of the group’s outings at Hamburger Mary’s.
As she chatted with friends, she overheard a woman going table to table inviting people to attend a reading she was hosting the next day. That voice belonged Sheree L. Greer, an author who was about to release her debut short story collection.
When Greer stopped at her table to talk about her event, Smith scrambled for words. “I just wanted her to stay at that table and talk to me,” she recalls. “It was like, what can I ask her to get her to stay here?”
Smith called off work the next day to attend Greer’s event, but it wasn’t the big connection she hoped for.
“Sheree was brilliant and amazing. Afterward, I go over – and I think I’m pretty cute – and she just kind of dismissed me,” Smith says. “She told me to sign up for her email list … I thought I’d never see her again.”
Greer has a slightly different recollection. She assumed Smith was dating the friend she attended the reading with. “I remember thinking, ‘the good ones are always taken,’” she says.
She realized her mistake when they ran into each other again at Valentine’s Nightclub. “We got a drink and started chatting it up,” Greer says. “We went on a first date shortly after that.”
Greer enjoyed planning unique dates and experiences for them. “I would come up with St. Pete dates,” she says. “We both lived in Tampa, but since I work over in St. Pete I would find stuff to do and we’d spend the whole day there. Sometimes we’d go to the beach, Sunken Gardens, the museums.”
After seven months, they made their relationship official. They continued to explore Tampa together, especially the Black queer community, but broke up for nearly a year around the time Smith turned 30.
“I just wasn’t fulfilled in my life, personally,” she says. “There were things I felt I was supposed to do by 30 and I was questioning whether I wanted to live in Florida. I was figuring myself out.”
They knew there was a chance they could get back together down the road. If they did, they decided they would take their relationship to the next level and move in together.
Greer adds, “I’m not one of those U-Haul lesbians. I like living alone and once I moved out of my mom’s house, I lived alone most of my adult life. When we broke up, I had just given her a drawer. Marriage wasn’t legal and I wasn’t in any rush to do that.”
They reconnected in 2015. At that point, they had known each other for more than five years, dating for much of it. They moved in together and discussed engagement.
That summer, they visited friends in Chicago. The weather was beautiful and during a stop at Buckingham Fountain, Smith proposed on a whim.
“It was this one beautiful time in Chicago,” she recalls. “It’s beautiful out. I’m looking at Sheree, the woman I’m in love with and I turned and asked her to marry me.”
Though she didn’t think Smith was serious at first, Greer didn’t hesitate to say yes. For the first time in her life, she truly felt accepted by someone.
“I always felt like you had to be a certain kind of way to be a good wife,” she says. “But this marriage is a testament to someone seeing you for who you actually are, not who you can be or who you should be.”
They waited two years to wed, focusing on their finances and buying a house. “That was the plan,” Greer says. “Get the house, figure out the budget and then work a little extra to not break the bank for the wedding.”
Their ceremony was small. “We only put energy into people who supported me and Sheree collectively,” Smith says. “Our ceremony, our reception was all about love.”
Greer adds, “All the people there had been part of our lives and our relationship. There wasn’t a single person there that one of us hadn’t met or spent time with in some capacity. It was a genuine celebration and we wanted genuine people there.”
Three years later, while the couple moves forward in their respective careers, they also focus on Kitchen Table Literary Arts Center, the nonprofit they founded together. It is dedicated to developing and supporting Black women and women of color writers.
Their nonprofit work is an extension of their happy home, Greer says. “We get along so well because our friendship is strong, we respect each other and we’re kind to one another … We complement each other.”
“I’m always going to have her back,” Smith adds. “I believe in everything she does. It’s nice. I love being around her. My love language is personal time. Working together with her is a joy for me and living together with her is a joy for me.”
Engagement date: July 25, 2015
Wedding date: July 7, 2017
Wedding venue: DoubleTree at Rocky Point
Wedding Planner: Tina East from StarStatus Events
DJ: Ace Vedo
Wedding theme: Tropical
Officiant: Pastor J. Ricc Rollins II
Photographer: Dorian Gray Photography
Do you have an interesting wedding or engagement story you’d like to share with Watermark readers? If so, email the details to Jeremy@WatermarkOnline.com if you live in the Central Florida or Space Coast area and Ryan@WatermarkOnline.com if you live in the Tampa Bay or Sarasota area for consideration as a future feature on this page.
You must be logged in to post a comment.