Harriet and Alley planned their wedding date two weeks ago not knowing June 26th would become a historic day for the United States. They woke up on their wedding day to text messages breaking the news that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that all 50 states must recognize and license same-sex marriages. Here’s their journey to the aisle …

Meet Harriet and Alley.

Courtesy of Alley and Harriet

Harriet Phillips-Woods (left), 24, and Alley Brito (right), 21 met online over four years ago.

They’ve been in a long-distance relationship for four years.

Courtesy of Alley and Harriet

And we don’t mean an-hour-away type of long distance. Harriet lived in London while Alley, a Cuban-American, was in L.A. Harriet says the most difficult part of their relationship was the huge time gap and of course, the normal ‘missing you’ cheesy stuff.

“The biggest struggle was timeframe being that the U.K. is eight hours ahead of the West Coast. It would be like 4 a.m. in the U.K. and Alley would be getting home from work. The time zones were really baffling and just the normal, cheesy missing each other and missing events – those were difficult, like birthdays and Christmas,” said Harriet.

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They did a lot of traveling between both countries.

Courtesy of Alley and Harriet

To be closer to Harriet, Alley studied abroad in the U.K. for six months. Then Harriet moved to the U.S. on a Visa.

“We visited back and fourth for a really long time, probably for about two and a half years. Alley came to the U.K. to stay for like six months and then it’s been back and fourth ever since then. I moved to the states last year,” said Harriet.

Finally, they decided to take the plunge.

Courtesy of Alley and Harriet

They decided to head down the aisle in mid-June this year.

“We’d been together for four years and we’d been thinking about it for a year – and [because] of logistics too, since I’m from the U.K. and Alley’s here [in the U.S.]. It just made sense to make it official so no one could deport me [laughs],” said Harriet.

Harriet has been in the U.S. just over a year on an F-1 student visa. Now that she is done with school and married a U.S. citizen, she’s begun processing her paperwork to become a U.S. resident.

Then they received MAJOR news the morning of their big day.

Courtesy of Alley and Harriet

After weeks of planning, they woke up to the news that their wedding day, Friday, June 26th had turned out to be…let’s just call it a “national holiday”… now that the Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples can marry nationwide.

“It was literally one of the first things I saw. One of my buddies text me saying, ‘OMG you’re getting married AND the Supreme Court filed same sex marriage everywhere [in the U.S.]… I woke Alley up and was like ‘Ah, it’s a big day! They passed it everywhere, what a coincidence! What a good day. It makes me very happy that our day means something else as well,” said Harriet.

“Harriet woke me up this morning and was like, ‘OMG, the news broke that the Supreme Court passed the bill that same-sex marriage is legal across all states.’ It was really exciting and nice to know that because I’ve heard a lot of stories from other people that have had to leave their home state to get married. It’s a feeling of joy that other people are allowed to get married in their home state and be free to do that without any hassle,” said Alley.

Basically, they’re going down in history.

Credit: mitú

To add to their good news, they were the first same-sex couple their commissioner at the Beverly Hills courthouse married today. He was VERY excited.

“The commissioner was very nice. He kept saying that he was hoping he would get one same-sex couple today – and we were the first of the day! I was joking with Harriet saying that they were going to put us in textbooks” said Alley.

How are the newlyweds celebrating?

Credit: mitú

“My family booked us a night in a hotel with dinner and a ‘surprise,’ so we don’t know too much about it. But first, brunch and strong margaritas!” said Harriet.

Do you know any great love stories like this one? mitú wants to know.  Leave a comment below.