‘Call of Duty’ brought them together. Grief bonded them.

Her college roommate Kelsey’s 25-year-old brother, Tim Buonodono, was hosting her party at his cottage on Lake Attitash in Amesbury. Kelsey, though, had matchmaking in mind. She had told Tim all about Elena, that she was smart and kind. “She’s like, ‘I really think you’d like my roommate,’” Tim remembers. And there was something else: “She actually streams playing Call of Duty,” Kelsey told him, which he had a renewed interest in during the pandemic. “That got my attention,” he says.

He was even more impressed with Elena in person, drawn in by her smile and her laugh.

“We hit it off talking about the game,” he says, adding that she’s beautiful. “I told my sister, ‘I’m pretty sure she’s out of my league.’”

Elena and Tim’s wedding and reception at the Beauport Hotel Gloucester was their second celebration. The couple had officially married in a micro-ceremony in 2025 before the birth of their daughter.Nicole Perfetuo/The Perfet Photo

Elena, who initially brushed off Kelsey’s attempts to set them up, was immediately taken with Tim, too. She thought he was attractive and funny. The more time the two spent together that weekend, the more they clicked.

“We could always just keep chatting and having a good time without even really having to think about it,” he says. Tim, who was working in North Andover as a mechanical engineer, and Elena, who had two years left to earn a master’s degree in criminal justice and criminology, recognized that they had a connection, but were unsure about the prospect of long-distance dating.

Still, when Elena decided to come back to Amesbury the next month to visit Kelsey, Tim “definitely had some influence on it,” she says.

Elena and Kelsey, who served as her matron of honor. The bridal party — her three bridesmaids were her three sisters-in-law — wore light blue, to coordinate with the hydrangeas. Nicole Perfetuo/The Perfet Photo

“And I just happened to tag along for some things she was doing with my sister,” Tim adds.

While in different states, they would compete against each other in video games — she got to know his friends playing team game Overwatch together — and FaceTime every day.

That fall, Elena was back in Amesbury, “solely to see him,” she says.

For the next year and a half, one would travel to see the other each month, their initial spark growing into a full-fledged relationship. Then Elena’s mother, Jane, who lived near her in Bradenton, Florida, was diagnosed with metastatic ovarian cancer.

The bride’s bouquet held two photos of her parents: one from their wedding, and one a more recent photo taken shortly before her father passed away. Nicole Perfetuo/The Perfet Photo

“I knew that my mom was going to pass away. And I knew that that was going to be very difficult based on having lost my dad and how the grief consumed me,” Elena says.

She told Tim they could end their relationship. “He said, ‘I’m going to stand by you and I’m going to walk with you through it.’ And he held me up through it all,” she says.

Instead of Elena and Tim trading off on travel, Tim went to Florida every month, “so that I could be there for my mom,” Elena says.

In the fall of 2022, Jane moved back to Fitchburg, her hometown, to be close to her brothers. Elena, too, was moving — to Amesbury, to live with Tim.

Elena and Tim included a memorial table for Elena’s parents at their March 27th reception, which would have been the couple’s 33rd anniversary.Nicole Perfetuo

“We knew that [moving in together] was the ultimate goal once I finished school,” says Elena, who had graduated that spring. The couple intended to get married, but felt the time wasn’t right.

There was one thing, however, that couldn’t wait. “I remember telling [Tim], ‘If you want to ask for my mom’s blessing, you’ve got to do it now,’” Elena says. “I didn’t know how much longer she had.” He agreed: “It was important for me especially because I never met her dad and didn’t have that chance to ask him.”

Jane died that winter, at age 64. “She got to see me start to set up my life here with Tim,” Elena says.

The couple hired painter Linda Marino to re-create a special scene from their wedding day, which she worked on during the reception. Marino brought the portrait back to her studio to add final touches.Images by Nicole Perfetuo/The Perfet Photo

By the end of 2023, the couple started to feel like they were in a better place. Elena had a new job, in UMass Chan Medical School’s psychiatry department. That October, they went to Texas to visit Elena’s older brother, Michael, and were there when he proposed to his girlfriend, Michelle.

Seeing how happy Michael and Elena were made Tim realize: I think we’re getting to the point of Elena being through the worst of her grief.

The next fall, they went to see Michael, and his then-fiancée, again. Now, it was Tim who was ready to propose, and he wanted to get Michael’s blessing.

Now parents to a 1-year-old, the couple doesn’t have as much free time as they once did. “We still play video games,” Elena says. “It’s our way to decompress when she goes to sleep.”
Nicole Perfetuo/The Perfet Photo

There was one thing the couple hadn’t planned for: Three days after getting back from Texas, Elena found out she was pregnant. The timing was a surprise, both say.

“We had talked about [having a baby] and we knew probably within the next year, two tops, it was in the plan,” Tim says. But, “We weren’t expecting her that early.”

Tim waited until Michael and Michelle were in town for Thanksgiving, and invited them over to help decorate their Christmas tree. As Elena fussed with the last few ornaments, Tim bent down on one knee behind her. When she turned, he popped the question.

The couple wanted to be husband and wife before their daughter arrived that summer. On May 30, 2025, with Elena 35 weeks pregnant, they wed in front of 12 guests in Tim’s parents’ backyard in Amesbury, in a ceremony that Michael officiated.

“We were both very happy with our decision to do that little [ceremony], but we both also knew we wanted to do a big one because we wanted to celebrate with everybody,” the bride says.

“I knew it was going to be a very emotional day for me,” says Elena, who had dreamt since she was a child of her father walking her down the aisle. “Having that separation was important to me: Let me grieve at this wedding and then celebrate at the next.”

But first, the couple welcomed their daughter, Grace Jane Buonodono, in July 2025. “I think my parents sent us our little Grace,” Elena says. “Just the timing of it all. . . . I think she was loved before she came to us.”

Elena feels a connection between Grace and her parents. “She always lights up when she sees photos of my mom,” Elena says. “She loves planes, and my dad was a pilot. … They would have loved her and they do love her, I’m sure.”Nicole Perfetuo/The Perfet Photo

As with the first, Elena’s brother escorted her down the aisle for the second, larger ceremony, on March 27, 2026, at the Beauport Hotel Gloucester, and again served as their officiant. Grace wore a white dress to match her mother, who walked down the aisle to the song “To Our Daughter (Lullaby).” The ceremony and reception were filled with blue hydrangeas, Jane’s favorite. Elena’s bouquet was decorated with photos of her parents, and she wore her mother’s sapphire ring as her something old, borrowed, and blue.

“It would have been my parents’ 33rd anniversary,” Elena says. “So that was a really cool, special thing.”

Read more from The Big Day, the Boston Globe’s weddings column. Recently married or engaged? Apply to have your wedding featured.

Carrie Simonelli is a multiplatform editor at The Boston Globe. Reach her at carrie.simonelli@globe.com or on Instagram: @csimonelliedits.