I Do!: Lauren Lodico & Kevin Mackie, of Massapequa

Lauren Lodico and Kevin Mackie said they knew their future would be spent together within a month of reconnecting in the spring of their junior year at Molloy University in Rockville Centre.

They purchased promise rings in June 2023, Lodico said, and formalized that promise when they married April 30, 2026, at the Disney Wedding Pavilion in Florida.

The couple had first met their sophomore year when working on a group presentation. "I thought he did the best of our entire group," she said.

Lodico, 23, of Whitestone, Queens, described her family as "big Disney people" and visited there with Mackie after they’d been dating for several months. "We’ve been back quite a bit since," she said, and they planned a visit for January 2024. "We knew it was the week we’d get engaged," she said. He proposed on that trip, she said, "during my favorite moment in the fireworks show in front of the castle."

Mackie flew in her mom and grandmother, she said. Her father, sister and brother live nearby in Windermere, Florida. They celebrated afterward with rides before the park closed.

Mackie, 24, of Massapequa, remembers almost missing his planned proposal window. "The night before we went out to dinner and I got food poisoning, and I was sick from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. It almost didn’t happen," he said. "Everything worked out and I survived, but it was a rough morning."

The couple, who are both registered nurses, planned their wedding before getting officially engaged, they said, and knew they wanted to use the wedding chapel with its stained glass windows and view of the Cinderella Castle from behind the altar. Their cake included a WALL-E and EVE cake topper from the 2008 Pixar movie, "WALL-E."

"It was perfect," Lodico said. "The weather was amazing and everything came together really well."

A bonus of their Disney wedding, Lodico said, was a family vacation afterward that included their niece Madeline Norton, of Massapequa. Madeline, who will be 2 in December, was diagnosed last summer with the rare genetic disorder PKAN, pantothenate kinase-associated neurodegeneration, a mutation that is expected to eventually affect her ability to walk and talk.