Andy Zwecker and Kim Smelter

Andy Zwecker and Kim Smelter were married on Saturday, Sept. 6, 2014, at the Jonathan Edwards Winery in North Stonington. Rabbi Jonathan Malamy officiated the ceremony.

The bride, 29, was a conference services manager for the Loews Hotels & Resorts in New Orleans, La. She previously worked at Saturday Night Live as a production coordinator for the pre-produced SNL Digital Shorts. She graduated magna cum laude from New York University (NYU).

She is the daughter of Scott and Judy Smelter of State College, Penn. Her father is a senior executive vice president at United Consulting, an environmental consulting firm in Norcross, Georgia. Her mother is a retired preschool teacher.

The groom, 29, will begin work next month as an associate in the London office of the New York law firm Shearman and Sterling. He graduated cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania, and received his MBA and law degree from Tulane University.

He is the son of Bruce and Melinda Zwecker of West Hartford. His father is an administrative law judge for the United States Social Security Administration. His mother, who is retired, was an assistant vice president in the tax department for The Hartford, an investment and insurance company.

The couple met through a mutual friend – a classmate of hers at NYU and a childhood friend of his from West Hartford. At the time, each was involved with someone else. Soon after ending his prior relationship, the future groom found the courage to ask his future bride out on a formal date.

For the first year of their courtship, the two lived in New York, where she worked as a production coordinator at SNL and he as a corporate paralegal at the New York law firm Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton. Eventually, Zwecker moved to New Orleans, to pursue a JD/MBA at Tulane University. Some time later, Smelter joined him in New Orleans, where she pursued film and television opportunities before pivoting into the hospitality and tourism industry at the Loews Hotel.

In August 2013, the couple took a trip to Florida to visit Disney World and each of their respective grandmothers in Delray Beach. While there, Zwecker convinced Smelter to spend the evening at the Magic Kingdom to watch the fireworks in front of Cinderella’s Castle. It was there that he got down on one knee and proposed in front of a crowd of tourists. She enthusiastically accepted, to the applause of a few dozen strangers.