Jay + Meg — Portrait of a Young Couple

Jay + Meg // Gloucester, Massachusetts

All weddings are special, but only some are truly unique, and even fewer are genuine from start to finish. Hosted in a small—but nevertheless real—castle along the coast of Gloucester, Massachusetts, and complete with a banquet hall, drawbridge, towers, and gardens, Jay and Meg’s wedding venue stirs emotions more of grandeur and nobility than of comfort and sincerity. Spend any time with them, though, and you’d quickly learn why such a castle was perfect for their wedding.

Aerial drone shot of Jay and Meg’s wedding

Built in the 1900’s and designed to look as similar as possible to a real European counterpart, Hammond Castle is a somewhat unexpected place for a wedding. I have nothing against the many couples who’ve been married there, in what I assume are wonderfully joyous celebrations, but, to me, something about a traditional white-dress ceremony and reception hosted within its darkened halls just seems off. The castle’s vaulted ceilings, hanging banners and many hidden niches just don’t fit with the clean-cut look of a “modern” wedding; white tableclothed round tables, encircled by guests in suits or formal dresses, appear equally out of place.

Jay and Meg thought so, too; they chose the venue—Jay passed by it a lot while growing up in Massachusetts—to embrace, not shun, all things Renaissance. Meg would be wearing a white dress (a gift from Jay’s mother and his cousin Bambi), but its textured mesh and her adorning accessories would fit with the Renaissance theme, as would Jay’s outfit. Rather than rounds, the tables were assembled in two long rows, banquet style, with a crisp bottle of Rosé dotting every few feet; the entire hall burned with a soft, dark yellow color from candlelight and sun pushing through the tiny windows high up towards the ceiling; decorations twirled with lace and little embellishments, and set a candid, rather than clinical, backdrop.

Jay arrived first, around 10 a.m., having woken up early and gotten ready at his hotel before coming to the castle. He greeted me with a warm handshake, and when I asked if there were anything in particular he wanted a photo of, he replied, with a jolly smile, “We trust you; just do your thing!” (This was a running theme; he and Meg had signed the photography contract after just a few short minutes on the phone.) He helped set up some chairs, and placed utensils out at each seat.

Meg arrived about half an hour later with her bridal party in tow, chortling in delight as her girls (possibly already tipsy) cracked jokes. She spotted me, and gave a great big hug before donning a few final touches for her dress and hair (boots, a tiara with matching belt, and some rings and necklaces.) Where I usually need to coax brides into a more relaxed state, Meg jammed cozily to her music, shimmying and skipping between each photo. “Coolest bride ever, right?,” one of her bridesmaids commented to me.

A chaotic yet buoyant spirit leavened the air around us, and by the time Meg processed down the aisle with her father, it was hardly a surprise what song she’d chosen for her walk. A burst of laughter echoed off the high ceilings of the castle as the now iconic opening to Game of Thrones came on. Arm in arm with her father, Meg stepped out of a side archway; most of the laughter came from her, as she walked down the aisle between the two long tables.

*Meg and her father walking down the aisle*

Jay and Meg live in Los Angeles, working primarily as voice actors under the delightful name The Booth of Us (theboothofus.com).

The two take every opportunity to light up a room with banter. “The biggest thing I love watching about Jay and Meg is how they play together,” noted Mike, one of Jay’s groomsmen and best friends from childhood. He asked if I watched The Office. “You know how with Michael and Holly, as soon as one starts playing, the other one jumps in, and sometimes it’s a little cheesy? Jay and Meg do that too, and it’s really fun to watch.”

*Meg and Jay’s entrance back to the banquet hall*

Being voice actors, Jay and Meg delight in expressing themselves through intonation, tacking on operatic, sing-song flourishes to their sentences, or switching to any number of accents at will. Watching them interact is like watching a never-ending lesson in the classic improv principle of “Yes, and,” where you build upon a partner’s previous words or tone, no matter how absurd the underlying premise. Jay and Meg snort animal noises at one another, lengthen syllables to make a point, and even occasionally just spout gibberish; if they’re not always trying to be funny, they’re at least always trying to have fun.

*Meg, Jay, and one of Meg’s bridesmaids during their reception*

Jay grew up in Norton, Massachusetts, a small town about 45 minutes south of Boston, and entertained from a young age. “He never stopped moving, and he loved to perform,” Debbie, Jay’s mom, told me. “Even when he was really small, he and his sister would put on these plays and shows for the family.” Jay’s grandfather bought a camcorder in the late 80’s, around when they were becoming accessible, and Jay used it to record and act in little movies; filming, pausing, moving the set, and then filming again in an early version of movie magic.

I asked what about acting and theatre he loved when he was a kid. “I remember the first time I got on stage; the feeling that there’s a ton of people—there were probably fifty, but it felt like a thousand—and, while everyone’s quiet and listening, you could say something, and make them all laugh at the same time,” he replied. “The energy that comes from everyone being focused; it must be some kind of king-thing, to feel that kind of power.” Jay continued to perform live theatre and improv and, after high school, traveled the country playing the lead of Don Quixote in a national children’s theatre. In his early twenties, yearning for a reason to move away from Massachusetts, he landed a part as an extra in Pirates of the Caribbean. “That’s when I thought, ‘California’s calling!’ I moved out to L.A. right after that.”

Meg got her acting and entertaining streak from her family as well. “I grew up in Des Moines, Iowa,” Meg told me, “and was really close with my grandma who lived right next to us. She was the funny one in the family; get wasted, dance on tables, that kind of stuff.” Meg described this with a thoughtful smile; her grandma passed away a few years ago. “The first time I knew I wanted to be an actress was in elementary school, when I saw the Nutcracker; it didn’t have any words, but I remember feeling so inspired.”

She got her first role in seventh grade. “It was this Greek mythology play, and I was so excited about it," she told me. "But we lived in this bad part of town and I grew up poor, so you kind of either got picked on or you fought back. So, one day, after I got this part, this guy called me a bitch, and I just body slammed him in the middle of school. We both got suspended." Meg lost the part, and had to watch someone else play the character in the show. Meg laughed. “I’m actually friends with that guy now, ever since we got suspended together.”

Meg isn’t the type to make enemies or hold grudges. She didn't belong to any particular group in high-school, but still got along with everyone, and beat out the usual suspects for prom and homecoming queen her senior year. (Jay was the same way. “The jocks, the weirdos, it didn’t matter; we were both friends with everyone,” he added.)

Meg had better luck with acting later on. In 10th grade, she appeared in her first commercial, a mournful ad for Planned Parenthood (“I sat in a waiting room, looking sad.") In college, a track scholarship funded her biology and theatre double major, biology because of an early love for animals, and theatre because of her penchant for acting. “I took acting classes outside of school, and got a part as an extra in the movie The Crazies. Because there was so much film going on in Iowa from the tax incentives, they upgraded me for SAG eligibility.” SAG-AFTRA, or Screen Actors Guild and American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, is the industry union, and membership comes with lots of baseline benefits for any new or aspiring actress. Getting it as quickly as Meg did isn’t super common, so it was a valuable stroke of luck.

Meg eventually lost her track scholarship after missing practices to stay on movie sets, and left school soon after to pursue acting full-time. She started auditioning and building up her credits alongside some girl-friends (Laura, Myranda, and occasionally Stephanie, all three of whom were bridesmaids at the wedding) on a multi-year road trip. “I met them in a college acting class, and we started traveling around to different markets, like Kansas City or Omaha or Chicago, auditioning and taking classes,” Meg recalled. They occasionally filmed their own shorts and movies, too, but spent the years mostly working to build their careers in front of the camera. When they eventually felt they had enough credits and experience from acting in films or commercials, they moved out to Hollywood.

*Meg, Myranda, and Laura in a promotional photo for their early acting careers*

Neither Jay’s nor Meg’s mothers (Debbie and Kelly, respectively) were entirely comfortable with their children leaving home to go to L.A.. Supportive of Jay and Meg’s careers though they were, both were still nervous about their children living so far from home. “You give your kids wings, hoping that they can fly; whether or not you want them flying that far away…” Debbie drifted into a little laugh. “All I wanted was for him to follow his dreams, but it was still hard. For the whole first decade he was out there, I remember sobbing like someone had passed away, because he felt that far.”

*Jay and his mother, Debbie, during their mother-son dance*

Kelly expressed similar sentiments. Speaking about Meg’s traveling around the country, she said, “I was scared to death for her, but we had to let her find herself. My mom and I used to send her care packages all the time, packed with protein bars for when she had trouble feeding herself.” Meg told me that she lived off of these care packages for nearly 4 years; she nearly always had trouble feeding herself.

*Meg’s mother, Kelly, helping fasten a clasp on Meg’s dress*

Jay and Meg have both been in Hollywood for a while now, and in that time they’ve successfully carved out a niche together in voice-acting. The daily cadence of their work is both tiresome and incredibly rewarding. “It’s sometimes the weirdest world. You train yourself to fire off an audition and then forget, as quickly as you can, that you even did it,” Jay told me. “We’ll go through some days doing 20 or 30 auditions, and if we thought about things like a normal human, like ‘Oh I really hope I get that part’, or ‘The money that would bring in would be so nice’, for every audition, we’d go down the drain, fast.”

Jay continued. “Sometimes, though, humanity still creeps in; you forget about something for two weeks, and then you have this moment, where you ask ‘Is it just… me?’”

Meg nodded in agreement, but chimed in with characteristic optimism. “It’s really rewarding once you get something though, because it’ll be like, you haven’t worked in a month but then you get an amazing part the next one. It’s a give and take.”

Meg recently had such a moment when she got a speaking role in the fourth season of the mega-popular show This is Us. She and Jay were driving to their combined bachelor and bachelorette party in Paso Robles, about 3 hours north of LA, when Meg got the call that she booked Miss Mindy, a character on the show who teaches babies through song and music. Taking the role would mean they’d have to cancel the party immediately and head back to LA for a costume fitting that evening and shooting the next day; most of their friends were fortunately understanding.

Meg in Season 4 of This is Us

“It was totally a case of ‘luck’,” Meg told me, which she defined as “opportunity meeting preparedness.” “I’d been learning to play the ukulele for about 2 years before the audition, and had I not been doing that on my own already, I would’ve never booked the part.”

Jay has had moments like these as well, though mostly in voice acting roles rather than on-camera; he’s appeared in video games like Red Dead Redemption II, Desperados 3, and Ori and The Will of The Wisps.

Jay’s video game demo reel

“It’s a rough life, but it’s also mostly great. 95% of the time, we are very, very lucky to do what we do,” Jay emphasized.

After Meg’s grand entrance, the rest of Jay and Meg’s ceremony was comparatively traditional: a few speeches, the hand fasting ceremony (a Celtic tradition where the couple’s hands are tied together to signify the tying together of two lives), and recitation of vows they’d written for one another.

*Meg and Jay recessing after the ceremony*

Their true personalities, and commitment to the castle venue, shone during the reception. Instead of a wedding cake, they served pies, and where you might expect standard instrumentals during dinner, they played music from the Lord of the Rings.

*Meg and Jay after successfully being fed pie during the “cake cutting”*

Both also took the time to perform for one another and for their guests. Meg played her ukulele and sang (to a very, very teary-eyed Jay) a rendition of Make You Feel My Love by Bob Dylan. Jay, despite admitting that he couldn’t sing, responded with his own Meg-isms laden version of Billy Joel’s She’s Always a Woman to Meg, who rushed to the lay down in front of him and bop her legs and head to the tune.

One of Meg’s bridesmaids, Franci, also wrote and sang a song to both of them. She’d met Meg years ago at a film-focused social club in Iowa, and though she was 30 years older than Meg, they bonded over having similar journeys through the same neighborhoods and schools. “Meg's kind of like an old spirit. She loves to be with older people and learn about them,” Franci told me.

*Franci singing an original song she wrote for Meg and Jay*

Nothing was rehearsed, which suited the two just fine. They gave a big toast to Debbie, Jay’s mom, for doing most of the other planning. “This wedding would’ve been a disaster without you, mom,” Jay said to her. She gave a knowing smile and nod; this probably wasn’t the first time she’d saved her son.

Jay is ten years Meg’s senior, and arrived in L.A. about as long before in 2002. “I decided there was no way someone could be sane enough in L.A. to marry,” Jay told me, a conclusion he’d come to after years of relationships that didn’t lead anywhere. “I honestly didn’t think I’d ever get married either,” Meg echoed in a similar sentiment. “L.A. is a place where everyone has an agenda, where it’s easy to be betrayed and have your heart broken, where people are fake.”

After ten years in L.A., Jay began transitioning away from on-screen acting to voice acting. If the classic story of life in Hollywood is that of starving artist spending their days waiting tables and their nights acting, working towards the ever elusive “big break," then Jay fit the story well, working as a server at Olive Garden for years, and later at a Scottish pub called The Tam O’Shanter. He jokes that working at the pub was his longest acting job, because he pretended to be Scottish to all the staff and customers on day one and kept up the bluff until the day he left.

“You are what you look like here, and so I was getting cast a lot as Jesus, or a pirate,” he said with twinge of annoyance in his voice, along with a resigned sense of burnout. “What I loved about theater was that I could put on a costume and just a little bit of makeup and become anyone. I couldn’t do that with movies. But when I discovered voice acting, I realized I could hear a voice on a commercial, or in a TV show, and take part of it and incorporate it into my next audition. I could be so many more characters.”

Meg moved to L.A. around the time of Jay’s realization, working up to three jobs at a time to barely scrape by, and even picking up dog poop for money at one point. “We all had this dream in our hearts where we didn’t want to do anything else, and that kept driving us as we put all of our money into traveling and auditioning and taking classes,” referring to her and the girl friends she’d traveled with before moving to L.A. together. Meg mostly did catering jobs or ones which focused on her looks and belittled her vibrant personality; she was a “brand ambassador” for alcohol brands, and also a “promotional model,” which she described as being “a glorified shot girl that goes around at bars in dresses and short skirts.”

Jay and Meg were regulars at the same bar (though they never ran into each other) and met once or twice through events where they had some mutual friends. They went on a date only after an unexpected afternoon brush. Jay was returning from a studio gig, and got an invite from some friends to stop by a pool party. "Pools and the sun aren't really my thing, but it was on the way home, so I decided to drop by for a bit," he told me. Meg, who similarly almost never went to these kinds of parties, was also invited by a friend. “I was broke, and I couldn’t bring booze, so instead I brought acaí bowls that I got from my workplace. Everyone just looked at me and laughed,” Meg said. “When she walked in,” Jay continued, “I immediately took a check around the whole place, and was like, ‘It's a Hollywood pool party. If I don't ask her out immediately, there's a guy here with muscles and their shirt off who will.’ So like, out loud in front of everyone, I just say ‘Do you… want to go out sometime?’”

It took another few weeks to actually arrange the date. They wrote down a few options on some paper, threw them into a hat (rarely can Jay be seen not wearing one) and drew a brunch trip to Solvang, CA, a cute town about two hours north of LA with lots of Danish architecture and wineries. “We had such a memorable day and night,” Jay told me, “but then two days later she was like ‘I don’t think we should see each other.’”

Meg explained. “Dating out here is not fun. You get hurt really easily, and I didn’t want to open myself up. There are so many shady people out here with different motivations, and it’s just hard to trust anybody.” She’d been in past relationships before where she’d been burned, and had since decided to never be the type to settle down.

Jay was heartbroken, but after years of trying to find someone in L.A. and all but giving up, he felt the need to try at least one more time. “I told her, ‘Just meet me for coffee.’ I wanted to say my piece, and if she still felt the same way, then we’d go our separate ways and go back to square one with the world.” He came with some flowers; when Meg got back to her apartment, her roommate Helen asked how it’d gone. Meg showed her the bouquet, smirking. “Ooooooooooo,” Helen crooned.

*A photo from early in Meg and Jay’s relationship*

Jay and Meg both take influences about love from their mothers and grandparents. “My grandparents were the perfect definition of love to me,” Jay expressed. “My grandpa adored my grandma, and I was also really close with both of them since he basically became the father figure in my life.” Neither Jay nor Meg were close with their fathers growing up, and both of their parents were divorced. His grandpa had three daughters (one of whom was Jay’s mom) but no sons, and so Jay became the son that he never had. “He’s part of the reason why I got into acting in the first place,” Jay said, referencing he and his grandfather’s camcorder antics.

Meg’s grandmother had a similar effect on her own life. “My mom and grandma were the ones who supported me and my acting career growing up. They’d drive me to auditions that were states away, or send me care packages; I’d call them almost every day to talk,” Meg said. She shared a short film she’d written and directed called The Night Visitor, which played in L.A.’s Chinese Theatre during the Dances with Film festival in 2018. “I wrote it for my grandmother to star in, and she was really hesitant because she’d never acted before. When she passed away a few years ago, I was so glad I made and had that film of her.”

The trailer for The Night Visitor, Meg’s film starring her grandmother

Both had previously written off the idea of ever being married, but not so much as to be unflinching in their dismissal. “I knew pretty quickly that Meg was the woman I wanted to marry,” Jay said. “I couldn’t believe someone this compatible existed. We both like and dislike almost all the same things, and things that other people are opposite about. I burn easily, so I hate going to the beach in LA. Everyone else loves it, except Meg.” “I burn! I burn really bad…”, she explained. Jay gave another example. “Going out to clubs, dancing at night, I hate it. Everyone else I’ve met loves going, except Meg.” “Well, because I worked in a lot of them,” Meg’s voice audibly annoyed at the memories of being a “promotional model."

Jay and Meg are both old souls, something their fashion sense and home decor reflects. “We like the same time periods,” Jay said, “and like being fashionable in our own ways. We both had collections of hats before we met each other,” “And we also had a collection of trolls. Isn’t that super weird?”, Meg asked me; I made a soft smile, not wanting to come off as judgmental of the adorable yet admittedly bizarre coincidence. “People liken our apartment to a pirate ship”—the walls are covered in a myriad of antique-looking art pieces, textiles, coats, and hats—“which we like.” Jay clinked his glass with Meg’s; the two worked through a bottle of wine, one of their favorite things to do after a long work day, as we video-called one evening.

*Jay and Meg at a vineyard in California*

Jay wanted the ring and proposal to be positively special. “My great aunt, who’d passed away by the wedding, was the only ‘theater person’ in our family. She sometimes pretended to be Charlie Chaplin when I was growing up. My family had one of her rings, and we used one of her diamonds.” As for the proposal, “We both love the Nutcracker," Jay continued, "and in a lot of ways, we got our inspiration for acting from it. Meg had seen it a few times growing up and loved it, and I was the same, so I wanted to do something with it for our engagement.” Jay had asked Meg to be his girlfriend at the Nutcracker in LA, and so it was only fitting to ask her to marry him at the one in Boston.

He wrote a long, detailed email and sent it off to the production company, only to discover he’d sent it to the LA production instead of the Boston one. When he re-sent the email, he received an enthusiastic reply.

“We’re always together, so I had to plan everything when Meg was on runs,” Jay said as Meg giggled. (The two share many more similarities than differences, but one of those differences is Meg’s love of exercise and Jay’s antipathy for it.) His plan was as follows: Jay would fly Meg’s mom out to Boston (knowing how important she was to Meg), and invite his family as well to see the show. Afterwards, during a backstage tour, a giant teddy bear would come out with the ring as a “ring bear-er.” Jay would have an eloquent and heartwarming speech written up, and Meg, blissfully surprised, would respond with an exuberant “Yes!”

*Jay, Meg, and some of their family after the performance of the Nutcracker and the proposal*

The proposal went as planned, save for the moment when Meg saw her mom in the lobby, and said, out loud, “Ohhh, ok, I know what this is.” Jay played it cool, but was disappointed that Meg had caught on and that the surprise would be diluted. (In Meg’s defense, she says she felt bad afterwards for saying it out loud.) Jay had also been unable to say any of his speech when the time came. “As you saw at the wedding, I’m a crier,” he said to me, “so I didn’t get out anything I wanted to say. But we had family there, and some awesome pictures, so… I think it was pretty fucking spectacular.”

*Meg and Jay showing off her ring after the proposal*

I asked the two of them about their futures, and if they wanted to start a family. “I grew up in a home daycare, where I woke up every morning to screaming children…” “and I REALLY don’t like kids,” Meg and Jay said back to back. “If starting a family means having pets, then yes, sure. But we really don’t want to procreate. Our legacy will be left in entertainment; we’ll be the cool aunt and uncle.” Meg added, “Plus, childcare costs a lot of money, and you want to be present for your kid, so you can never really go away.” (Both had strained relationships with their fathers growing up, but they’re also proud that those relationships are getting better every year now in adulthood.) The two love traveling with one another for work. When Meg is on-location for a film shoot, Jay sets up a mini Voice Over studio in the hotel, and then goes to support Meg on-set or see local attractions. The two are also often hired as a pair, which allows for even more travel together; Jay recently almost got a role in a video game that would’ve allowed him and Meg to travel to Japan to do motion capture work. They both hope an opportunity like that will come again someday.

*Photos of Meg and Jay during a recording session*

I’d photographed Jay and Meg’s wedding well before the COVID pandemic, and caught up with them during it as well to see how they were doing. The two were lucky that Jay had previously invested in a home studio, and so despite not being able to travel, they were still able to do some voice acting work. They noted how getting work has been a lot harder with all the normally on-screen actors out of work and transitioning to voice-acting. “The competition is fierce; all the B, C, D list actors are out of work, and with pennies from their wallet they can get these perfect home studios. So of course people are asking, ‘Do we want to hire Joe Shmoe and Meg Shmoe, or do we want to hire John Krasinski?’”

A recent series of ads Jay (as the Democratic Donkey) voiced in for CNN’s Election Campaign

The two have stayed busy in other ways, too, most notably by writing and collaborating with an illustrator on a charming and timely children’s book called The Quarantine Bears that explains, in punny and rhyming terms, what’s happening in the world and how to stay safe and healthy. “Funny right? That we don't want kids, but we wrote a kids book,” Jay told me in a follow-up email.

The cover for the book that Jay and Meg wrote together during the pandemic. You can purchase the book here, and use code ElevenEleven for $11 off the book. — *The cover for the book that Jay and Meg wrote together during the pandemic. You can purchase the book* *here, and use code* ***ElevenEleven*** *for $11 off the book.*

“I think we both finally have the credits now, where you can go on IMDB, and say, hey, these guys are really working,” Jay said. “We know it’s just a matter of time before we get something bigger.” “I’d love to be a series regular,” Meg added, “and we both think it’d be fun to get more into animation. We’ve been getting a lot of auditions recently for Nickelodeon.” The couple’s dream is to be able to make enough to get a house in New Mexico, keep their LA apartment, and travel back and forth between the two. “There’s this one pocket there that we can see ourselves being old. It’s this cute little horse town where you can own horses and even get discounts at restaurants if you go there on a horse,” Meg said, imagining the day that dream could come true.

As their wedding drew to a close, Jay and Meg grabbed a few final photos with their friends and family. Both of them had had their fair share of drinks, but knew how to stay level-headed. (The same couldn’t be said of some of their friends.)

*Jay and Meg’s guests toasting together*

As people stumbled and danced around us, Jay and Meg pulled me beside them and waved Jay’s mom to take a photo of us. I was flattered; as much as my job is to disappear into the background of a wedding, it still always feels nice to be noticed. “I feel like after today, we know each other so well!”, Meg half-shouted over the music. The two were among the first supporters of this project, and continue to cheer it on every day.

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