All photos by Carissa Woo of Torrance, Ca.
Jennifer Chieh Jeng of Arcadia and Andrew Tyler Tretten of Redondo Beach will be married Saturday, April 16 aboard the Yacht Ambassador in Newport Beach. The ceremony will be officiated Pastor Rick Zuniga and Captain Clint Aucoin.
Jeng, a 31-year-old senior consultant for Deloitte Consulting’s Strategy Practice in Los Angeles. graduated with honors from the University of Chicago and received an M.B.A from M.I.T. Sloan. She is the daughter of Eva Jeng, a special education teacher for the El Monte School District, and Sam Jeng, a self-employed architect. Both live in Arcadia. Jennifer’s little brother and groomsman, Andy Jeng, graduated from Arcadia High School. Jennifer’s cousin, Angela Jeng, is an English teacher at Arcadia High School.
Tretten, 32, is a senior engineer at the Aerospace Corporation in El Segundo who graduated from Caltech and received a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. He is the son of Carolyn Tretten, a retired school teacher, and Bradford Tretten, a retired business professor for Truckee Meadows Community College in Nevada. Both live in Reno, Nevada.
The couple first met in the summer of 2000. While Ms. Jeng was working a summer job at a lab in Caltech, Mr. Tretten stayed on campus and showed special interest in her fruit fly research. The two had a short romance before returning to their respective colleges for the school year. Ms. Jeng moved to Los Angeles after college; Mr. Tretten moved to Los Angeles after graduate school.
The two met a second time in 2006, at a party Ms. Jeng co-hosted with a mutual friend. They noticed each other immediately. “I wasn’t quite sure what to do,” Ms. Jeng said. “It’s not every day you see an ex-boyfriend who you haven’t talked to for years.”
But Mr. Tretten approached her. She soon saw that he was “very genuine and down-to-earth,” perhaps a “more mature version of the guy she dated in college.”
“She had this energy about her, so I wanted to keep the conversation going.” Mr. Tretten said. After awkwardly flirting for two hours, he went for his boldest move – calling himself from her cell phone. Mr. Tretten used her number the next day to set up a date for that weekend.
Over the next five years, she introduced him to Taiwanese food and wine tasting, and he invited her to baseball and basketball games and to family holidays in Reno. She learned to tolerate his military-inspired early-bird sleep patterns, and he became a key part of her plans for weekend trips and entertainment.
On May 16, 2010, Mr. Tretten took Ms. Jeng to the Redondo Beach strand, where he proposed on bended knee. She, of course, said yes. Nonetheless, he proposed two more times to lock-in her final answer.
