LIGHT TOUCH The couple iin Carmel, Calif. The next night, they are circled by friends in San Francisco. WHEN Jonathan Grubb first spotted Kestrin Pantera, she was dressed as a light-saber-wielding Jedi knight. Powerful, wise and dedicated to the “light side of the force” is how Ms. Pantera described the character she sought to embody at the 2006
Burning Man arts festival in Nevada.
Ms. Pantera, a cellist in Los Angeles who has also had roles in independent films, television commercials and music videos, is herself a force.
Mr. Grubb, now 30 and a principal product manager with Lookout Mobile Security in Los Angeles, recalled watching with a cousin as the warrior set up camp. “I know you’re perfectly capable of setting up this tent by yourself, but we’re doing it for you,” he said.
As they did, Ms. Pantera, now also 30, said she imagined a glowing arrow pointing at Mr. Grubb’s head. “This is him,” she recalled thinking as she mentally listed qualities she wanted in a mate — a list that she had drafted as part of the daily “personal manifesto” that she had been writing for years. In this diary, her partner was both brilliant and creative; a problem solver with a real job who also offered the promise of a large, happy family.
“Jonathan freakishly embodied every quality I’d ever written,” said Ms. Pantera, who now plays with a band called his Orchestra.
“Everything pointed to us being a perfect match,” Mr. Grubb said. “Except one thing: my girlfriend was due to arrive.”
Upon receiving this information, Ms. Pantera retreated to her tent and updated her manifesto, writing: “I shall not a home wrecker be.”
However drawn by Mr. Grubb’s blend of gallantry and wit, she kept her feelings private and proceeded to charm his group, which frequently included his girlfriend at the time, Micki Krimmel.
At the festival, Mr. Grubb and Ms. Pantera developed a chaste friendship. Yet Mr. Grubb remembers the moment he knew Ms. Pantera was in his future. “Kestrin began playing Jimi Hendrix-style electric cello after revealing that she spoke German and Mandarin and read monetary policy reports for fun,” he said.
“We all fell in love with Kestrin,” said Flora Grubb, a sister of Mr. Grubb. For his part, Mr. Grubb immediately headed home to San Francisco to disentangle himself.
Before circling back to Los Angeles, Ms. Pantera also made a stop in San Francisco, where she looked up Mr. Grubb online. His biography was factual, but she was stunned when she discovered this note on a social networking profile: he didn’t want children.
Although the two weren’t dating, Ms. Pantera said the information felt like a betrayal. “My manifesto-man wanted kids," she said.
Nevertheless, their romance began several days later at a clothing and costume store, where a mutual friend hosted a birthday party for Ms. Pantera. Mr. Grubb, in a soldier’s uniform, told her he was newly single. Thinking him distraught, Ms. Pantera, dressed as a mermaid, offered comfort. “But how do you feel about me being single?” Mr. Grubb said. “Great? Then get ready for our first kiss!”
Over time, their deepening long-distance romance led him to propose that he move to Los Angeles, which concerned Ms. Pantera. What if being in the same city imploded their very good thing? She insisted he get his own place. “Kestrin knows what she wants,” said Sarah Carter, who cautions those who might view her best friend as flaky. “She’s wild, yet entirely practical.”
And there was still the question of children, which the normally fearless Ms. Pantera was scared to press. Then, at a friend’s wedding, a tipsy Ms. Pantera told Mr. Grubb her intention to have a family. If he wasn’t onboard, it was time to cut loose.
Shocked, Mr. Grubb revealed that he had always wanted children.
So what about that online profile? He had invented many of them “as tests for my work,” said Mr. Grubb, whose résumé dates to the start of the Internet boom.
There at the wedding, they both burst into tears: the manifesto had been made manifest.
“I love absolutely everything about Kestrin,” Mr. Grubb said, adding, “I’d had good relationships before, but nothing like this.”
In late 2008, while visiting Carmel River Beach in Carmel, Calif, Mr. Grubb proposed: “I know you’re perfectly capable of living this life on your own, but I want to live it with you.”
They were married April 2, on the same windy bluff, in front of 60 friends and family. Batgirl, the couple’s dog, ferried the rings as Erin Schelcher, a friend who became a Universal Life minister for this event, officiated. Because the bride hates to “kill” flowers, she carried a bouquet of tillandsia, an unusual, spiny gray-green bromeliad that feeds off air.
Ms. Pantera, the former Jedi warrior, pledged in her wedding vows “to constantly generate a force field of awesome.” When asked about her hopes for the couple, the bride’s mother, Jan Pantera of Visalia, Calif., said, “I wish for them a good credit score,” revealing the origin of the bride’s practicality.
The setting for the couple’s reception the next night was Flora Grubb Gardens, a nursery in San Francisco owned by the bridegroom’s sister. The nursery is known for using rusted cars as lush planters.
Of her affection for the spiny tillandsia plants, which surrounded the guests and numbered in the thousands, the bride said, “They manifest life from thin air.” In the garden, 250 guests waved colorful flags and cheered as the couple pledged to “build a community” and “throw radical parties.”
Scott Watson, a friend of the couple, said, “Just being around them makes you a better person.” Ms. Krimmel, whom Mr. Grubb left for Ms. Pantera, was also a guest. She also saw the “rightness” of this union. “I want to be involved in their whatever, forever,” she said.
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