Before Sam Cloward and José Cabranes could get together and write their happily ever after, they would first have to weather a few storms — both metaphorically and physically.
Sam and José first met while they were working at Universal Resort in Orlando and later connected through Facebook. After messaging back and forth and planning a date that would not happen, José and Sam ended up getting into relationships with other people.
In the fall of 2016, as Central Florida was preparing for Hurricane Matthew, Sam saw on Facebook that José had gotten out of his relationship.
“I messaged José and told him that I was just out of a relationship too and if he needed someone to talk to that I was here for him,” Sam says. “So we chatted with each other the whole time we were hunkered down for Hurricane Matthew.”
After the storm passed, Sam suggested they get together and share relationship horror stories.
“Not as a date because neither one of us were looking for anything,” Sam says. “So he said ‘sure, we can go grab a drink.’”
They decided to meet up at Winter Park Village after the curfew was lifted for Hurricane Matthew.
“I really wasn’t expecting anything, so we met at Winter Park Village and he pulled up in his Mustang, rolled down the window and said ‘Hey’ and I thought ‘Oh, I’m in trouble’,” Sam says, laughing. “Maybe I do want this to be a date.”
Due to the storm, most of the area’s restaurants hadn’t opened back up. The two settled on sitting at the bar at Uno’s Pizzeria.
“It was one of the easiest conversations I’ve ever had,” José says. “We were sitting there talking and I looked down and it’s like ‘Wow, we’ve already been sitting here for three hours.’”
Sam and José planned their second date and have been inseparable ever since.
It took a few years before Sam would officially propose to José, but not because he didn’t think José was the one. It just took that long for him to pull his plan together.
“I started making a proposal video about a month after our first date,” Sam recalls. “Whenever I was out away from him or even with him I would pull away and I would record a video of me asking him to marry me no matter where we were at. I just wanted to do snippets for however long until we finally moved forward with a proposal, little snippets of me asking him to marry me. So he knew that I always knew it was him, he was the one.”
The time to move forward with the proposal came in the summer of 2019.
“It was a time when we could still go places and see people and do fun things,” Sam laughs. “So we booked ourselves on a Mediterranean cruise.”
Before setting sail, Sam posted the proposal video to their YouTube channel and scheduled it to go live while they were out at sea. They were on the Oasis of the Seas and Sam proposed to José in Central Park in the center of the ship.
“When he showed me the video I was just amazed by how many people had already commented and how many were already in the loop,” José says. “Then he told me he was planning this for years, and I was not expecting it.”
In picking the wedding date, the couple wanted a fun date that would be easy to remember.
“I liked 1/20/2021,” Sam says. “It flows and also because my mind is always in a hundred different directions, I know it is something I’ll never forget.”
They decided on that date not realizing it would also be the presidential inauguration, but more importantly they didn’t realize there would be a pandemic happening. They ultimately decided that this was there day and they were going to celebrate it in a way that would be meaningful to them.
“We like to plan new things, we like new experiences, so we plan them out and we call them date days,” Sam says. “We always have some crazy antics we get into and we always have great stories. So we decided for our wedding we would plan a date day. We gave the itinerary to our friends and they could come and join us for whatever aspects of it they wanted to for however comfortable they were to get out of the house.”
Sam and José began their celebration date day first by going to the Orlando Science Center.
“We started with the Orlando Science Center because it was the last weekend of the Pompeii exhibit. That was meaningful for us because the cruise we took went to Pompeii,” Sam says.
The day of the wedding was filled with more fun memories that ended at Lakeridge Winery where they both work. The couple livestreamed the event for family and friends who couldn’t make it.
“We had a glass of wine with our friends, walked out to the back hill between two of the vineyard blocks and the area back there is just beautiful and the sun sets right there so we were able to get a great sunset wedding experience,” Sam says.
The couple finished the evening with friends at a familiar spot.
“We had reservations at Uno’s, where we had our first date,” Sam says, “and we took photos at the bar.”
You follow Sam and José on more of their adventures by visiting their website and YouTube channel.
Wedding Date: Jan. 20, 2021 (It’s a palindrome!)
Officiant: Oral Frier (Best Friend)
Venue: Lakeridge Winery & Vineyards (Where they both work)
Colors: No actual colors, but they both had on black suits; Sam wore a red button down shirt and José wore a gray button down shirt.
Reception: Dinner at UNO Pizzeria after the ceremony, where Sam and José had their first date.
Cake: Chocolate cake, vanilla buttercream, a surprise from a friend.
Photographer/Videographer: Livestreamed on YouTube channel, produced by José
Do you have an interesting wedding or engagement story you’d like to share with Watermark readers? If so, email the details to Editor@WatermarkOnline.com for consideration as a future feature.
You must be logged in to post a comment.