WEDDINGS
A LOVE STORY LEFT TO FATE
Alexis Safo-Agyeman & Kevin Budds Photos by Todd Fairchild; shutterbugct.com
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lexis Safo-Agyeman and Kevin Budds were not supposed to meet. Sure, they both grew up in West Hartford and shared more than a dozen mutual friends. Yes, they like to frequent the same favorite watering holes. OK, so they’re sisters are former co-workers. To be sure, their mutual friends, Ashlee and Tyler Cawley, thought they would make THE perfect match. In fact,
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the Cawleys planned on setting them up. Why wouldn’t they? After all, they knew Alexis and Kevin shared the same family values, both loved to engage in intellectual conversations, and were believers in the sanctity of love and marriage. Still, by the time Thanksgiving 2017 drew near, Alexis and Kevin had yet to meet. And it seemed as if a connection between these two kindred souls was simply not in the cards…and might never be.
Trust the fates to intervene. In late 2017—on the evening before Thanksgiving to be exact—Alexis and Kevin found themselves out with friends at Treva Restaurant & Bar in West Hartford Center. And that was that. Now, nobody would ever suggest that the COVID-19 pandemic was a good thing — not in any way, shape, or form. But it did give Alexis and Kevin a built-in excuse to throw the kind of small, inti-