We are in August, which is my birthday month! It's also the last month of the Summer wedding season. I know, because it also happens to be my wedding anniversary month. August represents double celebration for me, so this story about a wedding, coupled with unexpected family at the perfect time, is the subject of this week's Feel-Good Friday.
In 2019, when makeup artist Beau Noir met her fiancé Victor Fox (a photographer), it was pretty much love at first sight.
The day that Noir, a makeup artist, met her now-husband, she had scheduled a photoshoot. When stepped into the studio, the photographer's colleague immediately took notice and stepped in to take Noir's photos. That helpful colleague turned out to be Fox.
“He introduced himself and kept trying to make me smile. Ever since then, we've been inseparable,” Noir says.
Noir says she's fallen in love with Fox “at least” 10 times since they met. “I never thought I could fall in love with a man more than once,” she says.
I greatly relate to Noir's story because that's how I feel about my Lynn. This month we are celebrating 20 years together and 18 years married, and it gets better and richer with each year. It sounds as though Noir is experiencing the same, and I am happy for her, because nothing compares to it.
Soon after Fox and Noir began getting serious, Fox convinced Noir to move her makeup studio to the building where they had their connection, for practical reasons: The owner specifically rented spaces to entrepreneurs like Noir and Fox. Noir did, and she and Fox combined their businesses. Gill Pulliam, the building's co-owner was the one to come to collect rents and attend to his client's needs; here is where the couple and the landlord formed an unexpected friendship.
Pulliam, the building's co-owner, is a “lively, jolly” and constant presence at work, according to Noir. “He's always good vibes.”
But it was only earlier this year that Noir and Pulliam connected on a deeper level. During a rare lull in clients, Noir was able to have a longer conversation with Pulliam, in which he revealed the death of his wife to Noir. She had passed earlier that same year, and Pulliam was still living in the nursing home his wife had been living during her death.
“We had no idea,” Noir says. “I gave him a hug because I was like, ‘Oh my god, like he he's taking his time to be vulnerable with me. I can't imagine how long he has held this in.’”
As their relationship developed over subsequent conversations, Noir opened up about her own life and losses. “We bonded over grief because we had those things in common,” she says.
Fox popped the question, and Noir said "Yes!" They set a wedding date for July 6 and started making plans for their "fairytale" wedding. But for Noir, one element was still out of place. Her mother was gone, and her father had never been in her life, so, Noir had no one to walk her down the aisle.
Beau Noir couldn't wait to marry her fiancé, Victor Fox, in what she calls her “fairytale” wedding. But there was one element of the event she couldn't fathom: Her wedding processional.
“I didn't have much of a plan. I was trying to avoid some of the feelings behind that,” she says. “It was just a lot.”
Noir was raised by a single mother who has since passed away and her father wasn't in her life. Because of that, she assumed she would walk down the aisle by herself.
This also mirrors my story. My father was murdered when I was a child, and my mother raised me and my six siblings alone. My mother had also passed away before I met my husband, so, I assumed I would walk down the aisle alone and it never set well with me. Like Noir and her landlord Pulliam, I developed an unexpected friendship with an older couple from church: Glenn and Barbara Kirkpatrick. They drew me into their lives, and God used them to not only fill that parental gap, but to be my family. Like Gill Pulliam, Glenn is a jovial, lively presence and has a huge, father heart. So, he fully embraced me as his daughter. When Lynn and I were getting serious, the Kirkpatrick's seal of approval was a necessity; and of course, we received it wholeheartedly. I also knew Glenn would be the one to walk me down the aisle, and of course, he did, as you can see from the photograph above.
Noir didn't know it immediately, but Pulliam would also stand in that place for her.
With Fox and Noir's wedding approaching, Pulliam got an idea: What if he walked the soon-to-be bride down the aisle? Pulliam first consulted the building's other co-owner, who encouraged him to ask Fox. After Fox gave the OK, he brought up the idea with Noir herself about three months before the wedding.
“He sat me down and asked me, which I thought was so sweet,” she recalls. “I've never had a man sit me down and do something so honorable.”
In that moment, Noir says she felt a mix of emotions.
“I felt happiness and joy, and I guess, a little bit of sadness. Not in a bad way — more in a way of like, ‘Wow. He sees that I don't have that in my corner.’ He wanted to be there and provide it.”
Noir articulated this well. When you grow up without a father, and are without family, you often don't realize how gaping a hole it creates until someone comes along to fill it. It's wonderful that Pulliam saw this and wanted to be the one to bridge that gap.
The day of the wedding, Noir says Pulliam wanted her to feel “as comfortable as possible.”
“He grabbed my hand so stern — I didn't even know he had that much grip. It kind of shook me, because, again, he's just like a little happy jolly man. It was almost like, ‘I'm here for you,’” she says of their walk down the aisle.
Like my Glenn Kirkpatrick, Pulliam became a proud papa, bragging about the wedding to everyone who would listen, and showing them the photos taken.
“He's just so excited. The first day he saw me after the wedding, he grabbed my cheeks like I was a 5 year old girl — like, ‘I'm so proud of you,’” she says.
By the time the newlyweds got back from their honeymoon, other building tenants had heard all about Noir and Fox's wedding day.
“Gill went around and showed everyone the pictures. By the time we got back to work, people said, ‘Gil already told us,’’ she says.
Once Noir received her wedding photos, she posted about Pulliam's gesture on Facebook and the pictures quickly went viral, amassing nearly 100,000 likes amid a flood of supportive comments.
“Getting that type of support from somebody who is not blood related is causing people to have emotions. That was so generous, that was so thoughtful,” she says of the experience, which has shown her that “love has no color.”
Love does not have a color, and frankly, neither does family. One life scripture that has shaped me is Psalm 68:6: "God sets the solitary in families; He brings out those who are bound into prosperity[.]" Families are not singularly defined by a bloodline, ethnicity, or skin color, but by the covenant and commitment the members forge with each other to always be there.
Those deep, spiritual connections create bonds that go beyond skin-deep and transcend blood.
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