Florida Married Couple Flipped Coin at Altar To Decide on Last Name
Florida newlyweds Jeff and Darcy were faced with plenty of decisions in 2019 during their wedding planning process.
One such decision the pair had to make — one that is traditionally easily resolved — was made in a rather unconventional way.
While at the altar on their wedding day in early December, the couple flipped a coin to determine whose last name they would take.
Darcy’s brother designed a personalized brass coin with the bride and groom’s last names and profiles on each side: “Conley” for Jeff and “Ward” for Darcy.
The coin ultimately landed on “Ward,” but Jeff told the Palm Beach Post that he doesn’t see himself as a loser.
“You could say I won,” he said. “I was the one who received something new.”
The coin toss was his own brainchild, one that he attributes to his prospective career path.
“It’s fair,” he said. “I am a graduate student in economics at Florida State and I think about fairness.”
Darcy added that she saw the coin flip as the beginning of what she believes will be a fair and cooperative marriage.
“Being with someone who was willing to start the marriage from a creative and teamwork and fair place felt like a really good first step toward an equal partnership,” she said.
This isn’t the first time the Wards eschewed traditional gender roles in search of a fair relationship experience.
About a year after meeting on the dating app Tinder, Jeff and Darcy each crafted a marriage proposal for the other.
Jeff took a more straightforward approach, gathering his musician friends in a park to play their favorite song as a couple, The Band’s “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.” He eventually popped the question while on a bridge in the idyllic park.
Darcy, on the other hand, made Jeff get more hands-on.
She organized a city-wide scavenger hunt, using poems to reveal successive clues that eventually spelled out “Will you marry me?”
Both, obviously, said “Yes.”
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