I knew she was the one I would marry as soon as I realized I couldn’t be away from her and her son,” Jen Warden shared about her wife, Traci Rodriguez. “There was a bond that formed between us that felt so pure and happy. More importantly, my two little girls felt the same way I did.”
Warden, who originally hails from Wyandotte, Mich., is an esthetician and spa owner of JenSpa Advanced Esthetics & Blush Medical Day Spa. Rodriguez is a Tampa native, graduate of Florida State University, and works as a senior accountant.
“Their happiness and my own were signs that we were destined to become a family,” Warden continues. “I also realized that this kind of love was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and there was no way I would miss out on having the perfect family I have always dreamed of.”
The couple had crossed paths several times, but didn’t officially start dating until February 2017.
“I remember the strong connection when we first met, and I fell in love with her before our first date,” Rodriguez gushes. “We talked all day and night since the first day we started talking. She was definitely what I was looking for and one of a kind. When she first met Zach and instantly bonded with him and treated him so kind and with so much love, I knew then she would be the one I would marry.”
Rodriguez proposed to Warden in Asheville, N.C., at the Biltmore Hotel Gardens. The wedding day was set and happened just as perfectly as the two could have imagined.
“From the second we woke up until we went to bed that night, it was the most special day ever,” Rodriguez remembers about the wedding day. “Jen put so much thought, heart and soul into each little detail of the wedding.”
“When I was walking down the aisle and I saw her face when she saw me, her reaction was something I will always remember because the moment had finally come when I would marry my best friend,” Warden shares.
But the most memorable part of the day for both of them happened after the vows were exchanged.
Warden recalls, “After we had finished the ceremony, we danced outside once the rain passed through. They say its good luck when it rains on your wedding day, and I could feel the cleanse in the air that the rain had brought. It was like a new beginning had started just for us.”
“I was dancing with my father and he asked me who Jen would be dancing with for her father-daughter dance,” Rodriguez says. “Since Jen’s father had passed away, I told him she was not going to do that dance. He said, ‘Well I am her dad now and I will ask her to dance.’ When our dance was finished, he walked up and asked her to dance. For me, seeing her smile and knowing she would get to have a father-daughter dance meant so much to me and melted my heart.”
“He was family before we were married, and that dance made me realize that I was truly a part of something beautiful,” Warden says.
