AS far as destination weddings go, having one at an orphanage near Calcutta is no doubt unusual. But so was the 20-year odyssey that brought Aretha Davis and Dr. Angelo Volandes to that location.
Chiara Goia for The New York Times
The girls from the orphanage helped the bride prepare. More Photos »
They met in 1989 in a freshman ethics class at Harvard. He was a handsome philosophy major from Brooklyn with black turtlenecks, slicked-back hair and compelling rhetoric.
Ms. Davis was soft-voiced and strong-willed. She wore her father’s fedora “with the feather,” she said, along with leather high-tops and Coke-bottle-thick eyeglasses.
It was her impassioned empathy for those less fortunate that mesmerized Dr. Volandes, now 38. “Aretha has boundless love,” he said.
They bonded over their shared perspective as first-generation Americans; her parents came from Guyana and his from Greece. Dr. Volandes, who bused tables at his father’s Greek diner, said they both grew up in families that prioritized hard work and helping others.
They started doing volunteer work together and engaged in endless hours of ardent debates — on every topic other than romance.
“We were two nerdy people,” said Ms. Davis, 37.
The relationship remained platonic. But in their junior year, Ms. Davis, who describes herself as a late bloomer, “developed some curves,” she said, recalling with amusement that “Angelo looked at me differently.”
Gone were her thick prescription glasses and fedora. Instead, she had contact lenses and cascading cornrows. “All the sudden she was this voluptuous woman,” said Dr. Volandes, now a medical ethicist at Harvard who specializes in end-of-life decision-making.
As one who spent Saturday nights in the library, he wasn’t sure how to proceed. It took him until their senior year in 1993 to send her a Valentine’s Day card, albeit an ambiguous one. “As soon as she read it, she ran back to my dorm room livid,” he said, remembering the interrogation that followed. Cornered, he admitted his feelings, and they tearfully embraced.
After graduating that spring, they received fellowships; she did nutrition research at a Guyanese orphanage, and he studied healing traditions in Greece and Egypt.
Deeply in love, Ms. Davis looked forward to taking their relationship to the next level when they returned for grad school.
Dr. Volandes, contemplative by nature, felt pressured. “At 21, she was ready to get married,” he said. “I wasn’t.” He abruptly broke up with her in 1994, insisting it was prudent for them to stay focused on their studies, law for her and medicine for him.
She was shattered, she said, and they didn’t speak for six years.
“There wasn’t a day when I didn’t think about Aretha,” Dr. Volandes said. Yet he never told her, even when his medical residency took him to Philadelphia, where she was working as a lawyer. “I imagined some other lucky guy was already married to her.”
But while Christmas shopping in 2000, Ms. Davis spotted him post-call, unshaven and bleary-eyed. “I had practiced all these things I was going to say to him for years, but I felt nothing but love when I saw him,” she said.
He responded in kind. “To meet the love of your life randomly for a second time, you don’t mess up on that,” Dr. Volandes said.
But this time, marriage was not her priority, having decided to switch careers and become a doctor.
So it wasn’t until 2008, with her fourth year at Harvard Medical School on the horizon, that he proposed, quoting from C. P. Cavafy’s poem, “Ithaka” about Odysseus and his epic journey to Penelope: “As you set out for Ithaka, hope your road is a long one, full of adventure, full of discovery.”
On Nov. 18, they had a brief civil ceremony in Easton, Mass., where Michael Marram, a justice of the peace, officiated in his home. Then on Dec. 13, the Rev. Andrew P. K. Mondal led a Greek Orthodox ceremony at a girls’ orphanage in India run by the Philanthropic Society of the Orthodox Church, where the bridegroom’s mother had volunteered in 2000.
“Instead of a big fat Greek wedding, we donated funds and asked our family and friends to donate funds,” Dr. Volandes said. The money will go toward college scholarships for the orphans. The couple plans to return to the orphanage each year for community service vacations, Ms. Davis said. “Our children will hopefully see the girls as their sisters.”
The 95 girls, ranging in age from 3 to 18, were both hosts and honored guests. They helped the bride prepare, wrapping her in an embroidered lehenga, painting her with henna and giving her costume jewelry.
“They have so little, but what they have they will offer,” Ms. Davis said. “The only difference between us and these girls is their parents didn’t emigrate.”
A dozen of the girls in colorful saris escorted them through a verdant courtyard and into a simple white chapel. There, the couple was joined by the rest of their 95 bridesmaids, who showered them with rose petals after they exchanged their vows.
“Our relationship has been more of a marathon than a sprint,” Ms. Davis said, sounding jubilant about where their journey had led.
“The destination is a beautiful thing,” her husband said, “but arguably the richer story is what it took to get there.”
A. Sharma contributed from Bakeswar, India.
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