Alexander & Daniel
Alexander & Daniel
Our Story
Blame Brecht!
The fickle finger of fate and Dionysus played a major role in the meeting of Daniel J. Miller (DJMillz) and Alexander Liam Hemphill-Burns (Burnzy.)
Alex was directing a production of Bertolt's Mother Courage and Her Children, which brought the strapping young cowboy from Sugar Land, Texas to Philadelphia to play the oldest son and saber dancing heroic soldier Eilif.
Two nights after the production closed Daniel had arrived in his first New York apartment, and Hillary Clinton lost the presidential election. He also knew that he had left something very exciting and potentially important behind in Philadelphia.
Alex felt the same way. Three weeks later he was visiting Daniel in New York and took him out for manhattans and oysters underneath Grand Central Station, followed by ice skating in Bryant Park. He had never met anyone who made him feel quite as silly, wonderful and on top of the world the way Daniel did.
And of course it took the ice skate strapped Texan to lean over and reach his arm around the wobbly blade walking and slightly wasted Philadelphian's waist to whisper... "will you be my boyfriend?"
After an attempt to catch his breath, and thrown off by the giggle of delighted embarrassment from an on looking teenage boy sitting on the bench across the way, Alex said "Yes!!!" This set off a chain reaction of events spanning seven years and four continents... shifting earth's orbit off its course and further towards love, and leading Daniel and Alex to a celebration of marriage on August 3, 2024.
CAMP MOOSWA
In the summer of 1909 a boys' camp opened on the shores of Lake Annis, 18 miles from the port of Yarmouth, and 12 miles from the Bay of Fundy. The celebrated camp, which had campers from as far aways as Baltimore, held its final closing banquet in the summer of 1957.
Since the summer of 1986 Alex and his family have spent their summers on the Camp Mooswa camp grounds.
When Alex's mom was visiting a dear friend and teaching colleague's summer home on the camp ground, she was informed that one of the counselor cabins was for sale. Without consulting Alex's father, she made an offer on the property, knowing it would become the vacation and spiritual home of her young family.
On the first summer, the cabin had no hot water, no shower, no washer or dryer, and it rained for 21 of the 22 days the family spent there. But they were hooked. Each summer their connection to the land, their profound love of Nova Scotia, the people who called it home, and its natural splendor grew and grew.
Daniel's first visit to Nova Scotia was in the summer of 2017, and he fell in love with Lake Annis immediately. Each Summer subsequently (except for 2020!!!) would require a visit back to magical Mooswa.
So there is truly no where else in the whole world better for Alex and Daniel to gather their friends and family, to say their vows and to get married.
