Josephine Adel Nett is a planner. So, one night in July 2023, even though she and her girlfriend of more than four years, Grace Elena Chun Duncan, weren’t yet engaged, they envisioned the next few years of their lives together. This included a 2026 wedding, traveling the world in 2027, and, hopefully, starting a family in 2028.
On the night of Nov. 5, before the election was even called, Ms. Nett abruptly changed her mind.
“I’m gonna throw up,” she texted Ms. Duncan, who was on duty that night, at the Portland V.A. Medical Center, where she works as a registered nurse.
Ms. Nett said she fears for the rights of same-sex couples to marry under the new administration. And, she added, they simply did not want to marry while President Trump, whom they do not support, is in office, feeling it would “always be a blight to the memory of the day.”
She told Ms. Duncan they must marry before Inauguration Day. Romantic proposal, it was not.
The next day, Ms. Nett, who goes by Josey, spent two hours searching for appointments in the city halls of Portland, Ore., where the couple live, and in the San Francisco Bay Area, where Ms. Duncan was raised.
Ms. Nett’s search yielded openings in Alameda County, but for Ms. Duncan, who grew up in Oakland, Calif., only San Francisco’s majestic City Hall would do. After hours of its website functioning slowly because of high traffic, she found a slot.
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The couple met as freshmen at Boston College in 2016 while playing on the Ultimate frisbee team.
Ms. Nett admired Ms. Duncan’s athleticism and wanted to be her friend. Ms. Nett mostly had crushes on men then, while Ms. Duncan chose not to think about her sexuality at all.
Ms. Nett, 26, was raised in small-town New Hampshire, in Grantham and Hanover. Her father is a German immigrant, her mother American.
Ms. Duncan, also 26, was adopted from China by a Chinese American mother and white father.
As the two began sharing meals in the dining hall, Ms. Duncan, who is more reserved, said she appreciated how Ms. Nett “could take any boring, mundane thing and make it captivating.”
A close friendship began. Finally, one night, they attended two big parties. By evening’s end, they kissed, which caused them to question whether they could — or even wanted to — go back to being just friends.
Over Thanksgiving break in 2018, when Ms. Nett invited Ms. Duncan to her parent’s home, a conversation about their post-college lives made Ms. Duncan realize she couldn’t imagine living far from Ms. Nett, even though she wasn’t yet ready to admit that she was in love.
When they returned to school in January 2019 after the holiday break, they officially became a couple, though in secret; Ms. Duncan wasn’t ready to come out. She especially wanted to tell her family in person, and didn’t visit them until the following year.
Ms. Nett graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English. Ms. Duncan graduated with a bachelor’s degree in nursing.
In September 2020, they moved to Portland, Ore., where Ms. Nett works as the director of global corporate intelligence for the Portland-based Swan Island Networks, a threat monitoring company. Ms. Duncan continues to work at the Portland V. A. Medical Center.
In March 2021, they adopted a stray tabby, Nala.
They were married in front of 28 guests at San Francisco City Hall on Jan. 13 by Ms. Duncan’s cousin, Hayley Duncan, who was previously ordained by the Universal Life Church.
Both mothers of the brides read poems, one by Mary Oliver and one by Maya Angelou, and both brides cried throughout their own and each other’s vows.
“I simply could not imagine a single version of my future where we weren’t together every day,” Ms. Nett said in her vows. “I think it was then that I started to realize that I didn’t want you in my life as just a best friend. I wanted you as a partner, as a wife.”
“You are my first and only love,” Ms. Duncan told Ms. Nett. “I was afraid to confront my true self. But with your confidence in your own identity and in us, I, over time, allowed myself to accept who I was.”
A nine-course Chinese banquet at R&G Lounge in San Francisco’s Chinatown followed, with a smaller group ending the evening at Top of the Mark, a scenic bar atop the InterContinental Mark Hopkins Hotel in the Nob Hill neighborhood.
