Indie Bookshop Bash

• By Nina Stoller-Lindsey

Jenny Hageman & Ken Young

Housing Works Bookstore Cafe
October 1, 2011

Jenny Hageman, 33, the cofounder of Brooklyn Robot Foundry, a children’s robot-building company, and Ken Young, 34, CEO of software startup Mortar Data, met in 2008 while leading teams on a large-scale educational software project for the City of New York. “It wasn’t until two years later that it morphed into something else,” says Jenny. They dated for four months and then decided to get married. “We don’t have an actual proposal story,” she says. “There was no Champagne under the stars. We just decided to spend the rest of our lives together.” The pair wanted to support local vendors in planning their nuptials. “Almost everything came from within a half-mile radius of Broadway and Houston,” says Ken. They chose the Housing Works Bookstore Café as their ceremony and reception venue, dined on fresh organic produce from the Union Square Greenmarket, and even officiated the ceremony themselves. They were especially thrilled that the bookstore was available on October 1, 2011, a date that is also a binary number. “We’re ridiculously dorky,” says Jenny.