Jamil Price and Trent Brock, then living in Knoxville, Tennessee, first connected on a dating app in April 2015. They chatted for a bit but had a difficulty finding a time to meet up and eventually their conversation slowed. Price even deleted him from the app.
“It was tough. Trent was getting his master’s degree. We were both working professionals,” Price says. “It just never went anywhere.”
Months later, in August, they crossed paths in real life when hanging out with a mutual friend.
“Lo and behold, Trent was there,” Price says. “It was a really weird reconnection that we had.”
After that chance meeting, he took Brock to lunch for his birthday. Then, they took a weekend trip to Atlanta to catch a Yankees game. It wasn’t long before they were dating.
It was a long-distance relationship for about a year, though, after Brock moved to Louisville, Kentucky. But when he moved again, this time to Tampa in 2016, Price followed him.
“We’ve been in Tampa ever since,” Brock said. “We love it. We built a home together almost three years ago and we’re loving that.”
Eventually, they mutually decided that they’d get married.
“The cool thing about being gay is that there’s no script that we have to follow, per se. There’s no written rules of how you get engaged,” Price explains. “We didn’t want the pressure and had a lot of discussions about what our relationship was going to look like and the steps of marriage.”
They designed their own engagement rings together, using the Kay Jewelry ring created by Jonathan Bennett and Jaymes Vaughan as inspiration.
If their engagement was considered non-traditional, then their wedding was even less conventional: the couple had a surprise wedding.
“None of our friends and family, besides the people coming to the wedding, knew we were getting married,” Price says.
Brock adds, “Can you imagine planning a secret wedding for one-and-a-half years before it happens?”
They swore all their guests, just 25 of their closest friends and family members, to secrecy leading up to the big day.
“We definitely felt that we had a lot of quality time with all our guests,” Brock says. “We’ve been to many weddings together and they’re often rather large, and we just don’t see how they’re able to visit with everyone. We’re thankful for the opportunity to have quality time with all guests. We’ll always remember exactly who was at our wedding and what we talked about.”
They wed Feb. 22 – 02/02/22 – at the Oxford Exchange. They were drawn to the date’s uniqueness.
“It’s a really cool date that not a lot of people are going to have as their anniversary date,” Price says. “When you add it up, you get eight – which is the month we started dating – and when you turn eight on its side, that’s infinity. There’s a lot of cool symbolism.”
Since they were leaving the next morning for Tahiti, the couple had to get their pre-flight COVID-19 tests done at the wedding venue.
“That’s not something you’ll ever forget,” Price says.
Then, when they landed in Tahiti, they posted pictures from their wedding to social media and began calling the friends and family to share the news.
“We got the whole gamut of reactions,” Price remembers.
One friend was getting his nails done when they FaceTimed him.
“Here on the East Coast, it was later, but in Tahiti, it was around lunchtime,” Brock recalls. “It was throwing people off and they would ask us why it was so bright where we were. [That friend] was so shocked he was screaming in the nail salon and had to tell the nail artist to stop.”
“Another friend was speechless,” Price says. “That was another of those fun moments to have to call people.”
It was a magical day – one they’ll never forget – and exactly what the couple was hoping their wedding would be.
“We were very conscious that we wanted to do it our way and that it was special to us,” Price says. “I think that was absolutely achieved. It was intimate. It was fun. It was a little stressful getting to the day, but once we got there, it was nice to sit back and let it happen.”
Wedding Date: Feb. 2, 2022
Ceremony & Reception Venue: Oxford Exchange
Photography: Djamel Photography
Officiant: Dr. Chad Whistle
Invitation Design: SincerelyByNicole
Cake: Hands on Sweets
Floral Design: Carmen’s Flowers
Guitarist & DJ: Jason Hobert
Apparel: Indochino
Accessories: The Tie Bar and Christian Louboutin
