2025 The Love that Downtown Built
February 14, 2025 by Noussaiba Garti
Happy Valentine’s Day from all of in Downtown Harrisonburg! We are back with a third year full of stories of love, friendship, and community building right in the heart of our friendly downtown. Swing by our Facebook and Instagram to see some of the cutest love stories that have blossomed right here in our sweet community and dive into this incredible collection of stories below!
Make sure you are following @DowntownHarrisonburg for more fun content all year long and more ways to spread the love!
Whitney and Alex Fitzgerald
We have been friends for many years, and both found ourselves single in 2020. After talking for a while, we decided to go for a couple beers at Pale Fire. We hit it off right away and quickly realized we’d both found exactly who we needed, and the rest was history! Surrounded by our friends and family, we were married at Pale Fire on February 10, 2024—the perfect beginning to our life as a blended family of seven.
Photography by Molly Suzanne Co.
Carrie Y. and Jansen M.
We had our first date together at Bella Luna and we now celebrate all of our anniversaries there. We even had our engagement photoshoot in downtown Harrisonburg. We just got married this summer and now live downtown where we love to walk to restaurants for food and drinks on the weekend.
Photography by Kenzie Zook
Photography by Simmers Photography
Delaney Blomstrom and Zach Reedy
We’re back again—we got married!
Zach and I met in high school and loved going to our favorite Downtown spots for dates, especially the Golden Pony for Crab Actions Shows. We started working together at the Friendly City Food Co-Op in college and spent more time exploring Downtown, where we met all sorts of wonderful people in our community. We fell in love with Downtown Harrisonburg (and each other) even more! We loved it so much, we bought a little house in a Downtown neighborhood, and decorated it with lots of help and inspiration from Heartworn Vintage.
Zach proposed to me on our front porch, with a ring from James McHone and a cake from Heritage Bakery. We had our wedding at Restless Moons, and we packed our vendor list to the brim with Downtown businesses- Lola’s Delicatessen, Heritage Bakery, BMC Bakes, and Sparrow’s Flowers, to name a few! We ended the evening with a lively performance by local bands Crab Action and Trapp Hill Collision, inviting the community to come out for free music. Thank you, Downtown Harrisonburg, for the love you’ve built and the lives you’ve enriched so wonderfully!
Emily and Brad Cohen
Brad and I met at a Rotary happy hour at Rocktown Kitchen, which is now our favorite date night spot. We live in Old Town and love that we can walk downtown to all the shops and restaurants, where we spend many evenings and weekends. Billy Jacks is our go-to brunch spot and Bella Luna Pizza is always a favorite for dinner.
We love downtown so much we had our wedding reception at The Loft!
Photography by J. Ellis
From Friendship to AllAboutHburg
My best friend and I met in our first year of college, two international students—one from Honduras, the other from Ethiopia—navigating a new country and college life. We’ve been inseparable ever since, sharing laughter, homesickness, and every little victory. Our bond was unexpected, but it feels like we were meant to be in each other’s lives.
As we explored Harrisonburg, we fell in love with its charm and decided to create AllAboutHburg to share the places, food, and experiences that made us enjoy our new home.
Photography by Be Thou My Vision
Lena K. and Dima K.
We first moved to Harrisonburg in 2011. We loved watching the downtown grow and become a special part of our lives. We’ve celebrated every anniversary, special date, and cozy weekly date night there. This past fall, we even included downtown in our 15th-wedding anniversary photoshoot, capturing the essence of all those wonderful evenings filled with laughter and love.
Harrisonburg will always hold a special place in our hearts, a backdrop to our beautiful journey together that we’ll treasure forever.
Photography by David Champagne
Samantha N. and Robin M.
Robin and I met while living in the DC area—but realized quickly that we had both attended James Madison University. Three months into dating we decided to take our first road trip to Harrisonburg, for the 2019 Rocktown beer festival, hiking in Shenandoah, and visits throughout all of Downtown. In that first trip, we got peanut butter cookies and cream ice cream from Kline’s, Blue Monkey pancakes from the Little Grill, Sticky Nuggs at Billy Jacks, burgers at Jack Browns, all while staying at the Joshua Wilton house. That weekend, three months into dating, is when we both also realized that this was becoming more serious.
In January 2022, we married, with JMU friends and alum by our sides. We’ve returned to Harrisonburg for dozens of trips in the meantime, and always feel a special connection to the town where we fell in love. Although we still live in DC, our hearts are happiest in the valley, and it’s where we hope to end up someday.
Kitty Love
While my oldest daughter had a guitar lesson downtown, my youngest and I strolled through various businesses and stopped in to Cat’s Cradle. Three newly arrived triplet kittens, Malcolm, Mallori, and Marley, immediately caught our attention.
We returned after the lesson and all three of us were certain that Mallori needed to join our family! Her brothers were also quickly adopted (we checked) and Mallori joined our puppy and bunny to complete our happy crew.
Photography by @webbplanet
Photography by The Commoneer
Arianna and Kevin Murphy
My husband and I had our first date at Beyond restaurant in October 2017. When I walked in, he was sitting at the bar, sipping my favorite beverage (bourbon), and my first thought was—we’ll get along just fine! That first date then turned into seven years of dating, and for several of those, we lived downtown. Our favorite past time was walking our beloved late dog, Rory, throughout the streets of downtown and popping in to our favorite spots such as Blue Ridge Dog, Pale Fire, and Sage Bird, to name a few of many. For our anniversary, we would take turns celebrating between Beyond and Local Chop.
We then recently got married, in November 2024, and all of the wedding festivities took place downtown—even all of our vendor partners were coincidentally all from downtown! Many of the core memories of our relationship are from our times spent in and around Campbell Street to N. Liberty. And we now take our dog, Opal, to the same places we took her late brother.
Photography by Tall & Small
Randi Hagi and Sean Waddington
My husband and I had our first date at Beyond restaurant in October 2017. When I walked in, he was sitting at the bar, sipping my favorite beverage (bourbon), and my first thought was—we’ll get along just fine! That first date then turned into seven years of dating, and for several of those, we lived downtown. Our favorite past time was walking our beloved late dog, Rory, throughout the streets of downtown and popping in to our favorite spots such as Blue Ridge Dog, Pale Fire, and Sage Bird, to name a few of many. For our anniversary, we would take turns celebrating between Beyond and Local Chop.
We then recently got married, in November 2024, and all of the wedding festivities took place downtown—even all of our vendor partners were coincidentally all from downtown! Many of the core memories of our relationship are from our times spent in and around Campbell Street to N. Liberty. And we now take our dog, Opal, to the same places we took her late brother.
This photo is from the annual Run Grouuup Thanksgiving Feast they have each year at Three Notch’d.
Run Grouuup
My love of activity and community took shape in the form of a local running group we call: Run Grouuup. Each week, members of our group meet downtown, run/walk the route, finish at a brewery, and enjoy a beverage together while catching up on life. It’s not competitive—it’s cathartic.
We’ve seen much of downtown on foot. This group has become like family—helping each other through breakups, illness, divorce, new jobs, new babies, graduating babies, and life’s curveballs. We’ve acted as moving crews, rallied together to offer support in tough times and in celebration, thrown baby showers, cheered each other on during big runs/races, and lots more. I’ve met and grown closer to some of my best friends through this group.
We rotate through all the downtown breweries (and more) to support each: Pale Fire, Brothers, Rootstock, Three Notch’d, Sage Bird, Restless Moon, Friendly Fermenter, and Jack Brown’s. They are always so welcoming, even though we’re sweaty, short of breath, and usually a tad loud.
Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places?
If so, we hope we can help! While there are no guarantees, this list of downtown businesses seems to have served the folks in this feature well. Check out our full directory and more Valentine’s Day fun from our downtown community in this roundup!
