WEDDING GUIDE
Shaquinta Lajuana Lynea Richardson (l) and Kimberly Lanai Daily
OLD-SCHOOL ROMANTICS Hand-written notes sparked up Shaquinta Lajuana Lynea Richardson and Kimberly Lanai Daily’s relationship. By JENNY BLOCK Photos by WE THE ROMANTICS Houston couple Kimberly Lanai Daily and Shaquinta Lajuana Lynea Richardson are old-school romantics who know how to make modern technology part of the mix. When the duo first exchanged phone numbers, they were both far from home. Rather than simply texting each other, they penned notes to one another in their respective journals and sent photos of those notes to one another via social media. The couple first met in October 2018 at an in-person Facebook group meetup called The Unfit Christian Congregation. “The group was meeting at a Mexican restaurant in Atlanta,” says Kimberly. “I booked a flight from Houston to go meet my internet friends in person.” 122 JUNE 2021 | OutSmartMagazine.com
Shaquinta and her best friend drove to Atlanta from South Carolina for that same Facebook meetup. “I knew Shaquinta’s best friend, Chrishele, from the group, but I didn’t know Shaquinta,” Kimberly explains. But Shaquinta knew exactly who Kimberly was, and that was part of what inspired her to attend the meetup. “When dinner was over, Chrishele urged me to ride with them to an after-party,” Kimberly says. “I obliged, and the rest, as they say, is history,” Kimberly, a Houston native who graduated with a law degree from the University of Texas School of Law, is an energy litigation attorney at Eversheds Sutherland (US) LLP. Shaquinta, who earned a PhD degree from the University of Georgia, is now a licensed marriage and
family therapist at Building Bridges Family Therapy and a life coach at Beyond Achieving LLC, both of which she owns. The couple currently lives in Manvel, Texas. Kimberly says that she knew she wanted to marry Shaquinta by the end of their first date, an overnight trip to Asheville, North Carolina that took place about a month after their fateful meeting. Her initial instincts were confirmed after they had been dating for about five months. “We were on vacation in Cancún, and Shaquinta was walking along the beach with this beautiful floral dress blowing in the wind. It hit me that she was everything I ever wanted—and that the next time we visited Mexico, she’d have a ring on her finger. I proposed nine months later,” Kimberly says.
