Nathaniel Beres
Assistant Professor of Chemistry
When I got married, I was in grad school. I was told my one job was to plan the honeymoon. Her family was Catholic, so I decided to surprise her with a trip to Italy. I didn’t want to tell her we were going to Italy, so I told her that she needed to get a passport and a white dress. I like to try to do surprises but I’m always paranoid that she’s on to me, so I threw her false clues. I researched cruises off the coast of California to Mexico, printed off itineraries and left them on my coffee table so she would find these and think that we were going to Mexico. I was just trying to throw her off. … Turns out she never even noticed.
I actually had arranged for our marriage to be blessed by the pope. She had to wear a white dress -- that was a requirement by them -- and I had to wear a suit. I didn’t want her to bring her bridal gown. I thought that would be a bit much to transport to Italy. So the day before our wedding, we exchanged gifts. For a while, I gave her a hard time. I thought it was unfair that men had to buy women an engagement ring and men get nothing. She gave her gift first to me and it was an engagement watch, inscribed on the bottom and everything. I gave her a shoebox and on top of it was an itinerary of everything we were doing along with plane tickets, the papal blessing, language guides of how to speak Italian, Euros … different things that she would need and maybe not think about. She just lost it. We go to our separate places for the night and her bridesmaids keep texting me, “She will not stop talking about Italy! She will not stop talking about Italy!”
It’s funny because it goes from excited to getting married to, “I’m going to Italy on Monday!”
Dr. Nathaniel Beres is an assistant professor of Chemistry here at Heidelberg. He earned a B.S. in chemistry and biology from Walsh University in 2005, then went on to earn his Ph.D. from The University of Akron in 2010. Nathaniel and his wife, Joanna, have one son, Alex.