Thomas Saujet and Hannah Targoff
Met: April 1998 Engaged: Oct. 10, 2001 Projected Wedding Date: Aug. 24, 2002
Thomas Saujet was curled up on a brown leather couch with his fiancée, Hannah Targoff-whom he calls ” bébé “-in their apartment north of Gramercy Park. They were both barefoot, surrounded by new crystal bowls and big, empty Tiffany boxes.
“She’s my sunshine,” said Mr. Saujet, a blue-eyed, sandy-haired 27. “When I get up in the morning, she’s always happy …. She loves every moment of life, and every moment with her is always a pleasure. She’s like an angel. She’s my angel.”
Ms. Targoff, a 26-year-old brunette with a curvy figure, smiled adoringly at her intended and put her feet, pedicured with sparkly blue polish, on the glass coffee table. They met when she was an undergraduate in political science at Tufts and went to a friend’s apartment to study for a final; he (one of those people who graduates, then continues to lurk about campus) was sprawled there watching Carlito’s Way . “I thought he was really cute, and he seemed very mature for his age and very manly-like an adult , ” she said. “And he was interesting! And he was French !”
Technically, Mr. Saujet is French-he was born in Cannes-but he grew up in Sands Point, Long Island, where his father, a cosmetics and fragrance distributor, moved for business reasons. The heir-apparent is now a vice president at the company, Cosmetique et Parfums International, running its Eastern U.S. offices from New York. He pronounces his name To- mah , wears Thierry Mugler suits, and will only smoke the European yellow-filtered Marlboro Lights-yet he also has a slight Long Island accent and loves lox and the Lakers. Oh, sweet contradiction!
Their second meeting was at Spy, the Greene Street discotheque , after Ms. Targoff came to the big city to work at Saks, where she is now an associate buyer in European couture. Mr. Saujet came up behind her and tugged on her ponytail, and things progressed from there.
“She was very different from the other girls I had met,” he said. “For me, Hannah is not the traditional American woman.” He felt she could help ground him. “I was a big party animal,” he said.
“He is, to me, my Mr. Wonderful. He’s honest, he’s sweet, he’s charming,” said Ms. Targoff. “He’s cool. He’s French !”
On the plane for their first visit to Paris, she rifled through his bag, thinking she might discover a ring, but found nothing. A few days later, though, they were walking along the Seine and he presented her with a princess-cut diamond with two baguettes, weighing in at a formidable 2.5 carats.
Their wedding plans are filled with French touches: a registry of Bernardaud Grace china at Bloomingdale’s (“We’re so sad because we haven’t received any china!” exclaimed Ms. Targoff); rehearsal dinner in the garden of Gascogne, a bistro in Chelsea; first dance at the Rainbow Room to “La Vie en Rose”-albeit the Grace Jones rendition.
They still go to clubs like Man Ray occasionally, though they’re no longer habitués. “We used to get in quick, but now we wait on line, like old farts,” Mr. Saujet said.
Leslie Appelbaum and Steph Sebbag
Met: March 2001 Engaged: May 24, 2002 Projected Wedding Date: Summer 2003
In her late 20’s, Leslie Appelbaum was working as a publicist for DKNY and anxious about her marriage prospects, so she consulted a psychic.
Barbara Reeder, an Upper West Side clairvoyant, told the sloe-eyed, round-faced Ms. Appelbaum that she would meet her soulmate when she was in her early to mid-30’s. He would be “light” (Ms. Appelbaum, who has long, silken dark hair, took this to mean “blond”), would love dogs and would be tall. She also gave her client a lengthy mantra to repeat nightly, invoking phrases like “spiritual magnetism.”
Ms. Appelbaum repeated the wordy refrain every evening she spent alone. Her 30th birthday came and went. She got a new job at Armani-senior director of publicity and event planning. But beneath that crisp, tailored exterior, she continued to pray for a “perfect soul union.”
Steph Sebbag, who used to work at the nebulous Internet consulting outfit Razorfish and is now a partner in a technical firm, spotted her one night at Tao, the pan-Asian restaurant in midtown where a huge Buddha gazes down on bargoers. “She was lighting up the room,” he said. Two weeks later, by weird coincidence, they both showed up at the Slipper Room on Orchard Street.
“The psychic said that when we met, it was going to be like a car crash, and that’s how it felt!” said Ms. Appelbaum, 32. “We started talking and I’d never felt, like, such a magnetic …. ” She trailed off. “Like, I was almost gyrating!”
Indeed, she soon was literally gyrating as Mr. Sebbag, an accomplished ballroom dancer, whisked her onto the dance floor. “It was very intense. It was just like, Boom !” he said.
“He loves to dance,” said Ms. Appelbaum. “Even this morning, I was getting out of the shower and he just grabbed me.”
Per the clairvoyant’s specs, Mr. Sebbag is tall-six feet-partial to pups and bald. (Ms. Appelbaum has decided that when the psychic said “light,” she might’ve been referring to a shiny cranium.) He’s 30, son of the Canadian First Lady’s hairdresser and fond of Tod’s leather driving shoes. He quickly stocked Ms. Appelbaum’s Upper East Side one-bedroom with sleek furniture from Pottery Barn. “He’s the decorator!” she said. “I love how he cares about details.”
One evening after work, Ms. Appelbaum went for a massage at Bliss in Soho and then joined her beau for a stroll on Poets’ Walk in Central Park. Soon after he pulled out a 2.2.-carat emerald diamond with quarter-carat baguettes set in platinum at the Bethesda fountain, she called her psychic to announce the good news.
They’ll be married at the Essex House. Ms. Appelbaum will wear strapless Reem Acra; Mr. Sebbag, Armani. They’re trying to convince the trendy downtown Magnolia Bakery to do a wedding cake. “I’ll tier it myself if I have to,” said Ms. Appelbaum.
“I’m never bored when I’m with her, ever,” said Mr. Sebbag. “And I’m bored with a lot of people!”
Jody Silk and Eric Wolk
Met: Spring 1994 Engaged: May 5, 2002 Projected Wedding Date: March 2003
Meet the logophilic lovers!
They play Scrabble everywhere: the beach, the plane or just the living room of their Hoboken, N.J., one-bedroom, where-we’re just guessing here-the little letter racks are sometimes upended in a crazy burst of lust, a mad confusion of tiles and limbs ….
“We do it every weekend.” said Eric Wolk, 26, a spiky-haired advertising executive at a big midtown firm he preferred not to name. “We’ve kind of become Scrabble junkies.”
He usually wins. “He always manages to come up with a seven-letter word!” complained Jody Silk, 25, a curly-haired moppet who writes for a financial-news network.
Mr. Wolk tends to score in the respectably high 200’s. “I’m an extremely defensive player,” he said. We all know what that means: Someone who’s unembarrassed about putting down those really annoying short filler words like “asp” (a small, venomous snake) and “jo” (sweetheart-and one of his nicknames for you-know-who).
They’ve known each other since their college years-University of Delaware for her, Maryland for him. They knew it was love after a trip to the Poconos in 2000, when he taught her how to ski. “He’s amazing -he’s fun, he’s smart, he’s Mr. Energy!” she said.
“I’ve pretty much been saving for the ring from the first week I met her,” said Mr. Wolk. “She is absolutely wonderful.”
One day, they were sitting in Bryant Park on a big sheet, eating tuna bagelwiches and deeply absorbed in their favorite pastime. Sweat was beading on Ms. Silk’s upper lip-she was ahead for a change! The penultimate turn arrived. Mr. Wolk’s rack was empty.
“You must have all the M’s and W’s and Y’s, because there are none on the board,” he said.
“I was like, ‘No, I don’t have any! I have an R and a U!'” Ms. Silk said.
Mr. Wolk dramatically swept the letters from the board, much to her dismay-“It’s the one game I’m winning in two and a half years,” she said-and then pulled out a plastic baggie, in which he’d cleverly sequestered a certain combination of letters. “I got down the W-I-L-L, and she gave me this weird, puzzled look,” he said.
She wised up fast, though, when she saw the round diamond solitaire in a four-prong platinum setting. It was engraved with the letters “ILYSM,” for “I Love You So Much.”
Hours of quiet indoor enjoyment await the couple: His aunt is buying them a special inlaid wooden Scrabble end table she found on OurGrandchild.com.
