&In Love: A series that explores every facet of Black love, from friendship and romantic relationships, to loving yourself.
Jada Paul has a confession: She and her husband, Golden State Warriors point guard Chris Paul, have never really celebrated Valentine’s Day.
For one, the holiday falls during basketball season and there is usually a game that night. And two, it’s too close to Jada’s birthday, February 16. “I never care about Valentine’s Day because my birthday is the one day of the year that’s all about me,” Pau said.
However, she vividly remembers the date she planned for her second anniversary with her husband. “It was the one time that Chris couldn’t tell me no,” she explained.
“We’d just moved to Los Angeles, we’d been there about a year, and I planned a helicopter ride of the city,” Paul continued. “My husband is a terrible flier, he hates to fly — which is crazy as much as he has to travel for work. I booked this helicopter and we did a tour and I knew he couldn’t say no. I said just get dressed, and so we’re driving and he’s looking at his map, trying to figure out where we’re going and we pulled up to this airfield and he’s like, ‘No I’m not doing it.’ I’m like, ‘You can’t tell me no, it’s our anniversary.’ It was fun for me to push him out of his comfort zone. He ended up loving it.”
The Pauls have been married for 12 years and take turns planning their anniversary, which lightens the burden on each other. “It’s always kind of interesting to see what the other person comes up with,” she said. “We always try to top each other. It’s funny.”
Even though Jada and Chris are both from Winston-Salem, North California, they rarely crossed paths growing up. “We’re from the same hometown and I’m a year older than Chris,” Paul told Andscape. “We went to rival high schools. Chris’ college is our hometown, and I was home for Christmas break my sophomore year of college. We had a mutual friend that introduced us.”
Initially, she said, she didn’t think Chris was interested in her. “He didn’t call immediately, so I thought maybe he’s not interested, whatever.” This was 2003. Still, the two ended up hanging out and have been inseparable ever since.
Curated by Alexis P
“We were so young and the first thing I noticed was he was a gentleman — which says a lot being a teenage boy,” said Paul. “He came and picked me up. He borrowed his dad’s car and we went to the movies. Our first date was to see Love Don’t Cost a Thing with Christina Milian and Nick Cannon. He talked about how fine Christina Milan was the entire night, and I’m like, ‘This is not how you win somebody over.’”
Obviously, he did win her over. And with Chris’ move to San Francisco to play with the Warriors this season and the couple now living in different cities (she’s based in Los Angeles with their children), it’s like the two are dating again. “We make it a point when we leave each other to decide when we’ll see each other next,” she said. “We have just enough time to miss each other.”
Even though Jada and Chris don’t explicitly celebrate Valentine’s Day — she suggests couples prioritize doing something meaningful for each other.
“To me Valentine’s Day is a cliché, you do the chocolates and the flowers. Life is so busy and we get caught up in the everyday, you know, the nuances and the routines that you forget to tell the people that you care about them,” Paul said. “So it’s nice to make a little extra effort to show people how you care, how much you care and do things that are thoughtful as opposed to getting caught up in the chocolates and roses.”
Paul can be intentional about how she carves out time for herself and her children, as well as her marriage, with the help of a planner. So much so that she launched Curated by Alexis P, Paul’s “collection of items that you never knew you needed, but can’t imagine living without,” which includes planners and journals.
The brand launched late last year but has been years in the making. “In 2016, our daughter was turning four and I was trying to plan a birthday party for her,” Paul said. “I love to plan parties and events, I’m also one of those people, I write everything down.”
Her planning had gotten so intense that she had a jumble of notes, including phone numbers, contact information and ideas scribbled on random pieces of paper — like the backs of receipts — so her search led her to Barnes & Noble, looking for a party-planning book of sorts.
“I couldn’t find one,” Paul said. “The closest thing I found was a wedding planner, but that was too extensive for my needs. So I decided to create one.” But you know what happens when you make plans — God laughs. In 2017, the Los Angeles Clippers traded Chris Paul to the Houston Rockets and Jada and her family had to move again.
“Fast-forward to 2020 when covid happened and we’re all in the house,” said Paul. “The kids are doing remote learning. I was bored to death and [said] let me pull this stuff back out and see what I can make of it.”
Paul made a rough prototype on the graphic design app Canva just to get her brain moving. She then took a physical copy to a graphic designer, who turned it into a usable product. And with the encouragement of a friend who works with her husband, Paul created the planner.
After chatting with a mom friend, Paul decided she needed to add a journal to the line-up. “I remember walking away from this woman wanting to pray for her,” Paul said. “A blank journal sometimes can be so overwhelming, so I created a guided journal, as a gentle guidance.”
She continued, “Most journals have all these prompts, so you try to fill them in but you feel almost incomplete if you leave something blank. It’s nothing like that, it’s more things everyone deals with, whether it’s health and wellness, grief, loss, heartbreak, financial things. It’s subdivided to help you organize your thoughts.”
For Paul, if you want to jot down a scripture that resonates or a quote, you can do it in one place, keeping track of your thoughts. “It’s also a great reference tool. A year from now to go be able to go back and read, like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is what I was going through, look where I am now.’” The journals are a reflective tool and a place to organize your thoughts. “All books kind of came out of a personal need in different stages of my life,” Paul said.
As for the brand’s name, Alexis P, it functions as a love letter to Paul’s daughter. “My name is Jada Alexis Paul. My daughter is Cameron Alexis Paul,” she explained. “She’s super creative and I wanted to create a space, where as she gets older, she can create things under the same umbrella because Alexis P is the both of us.”
