My fiance Tony Copple and I are getting married on Friday June 18, in Kanata, a suburb of Ottawa, Ontario (Canada's capital city). Our story has a modern edge to it - we met on the internet as a "You've Got Mail" Story. We connected when I sent him a thank-you e-mail (on March 11, 1998) for a site of his that was essential for research on a controversial topic: The Moderator Controversy of the United Church of Canada. This was to be a paper for a my masters-level theological studies (for which I received an A+ thanks to Tony's help). This website is located at www.igs.net/~tonyc/mod.html. On this website, our initial contact is preserved (under Mar 10 letters), as well as my papers and a link to our engagement announcement.

Tony lives in Kanata and I live many miles away in Toronto, so it was over three months before we met in person (when Tony invited me up to Ottawa to see Billy Graham on June 27, 1998). Over the spring, we grew closer and closer in our e-correspondence, and by mid-May I had fallen in love with him based on his witty, kind and compassionate character. We had much in common (except the difference of our ages and that he is originally from England). I only had a bad photo of him from the internet and he didn't know what I looked like (yet). I remember thinking that I'd better be careful or I'd end up as his wife!!!

Once we met in person, our friendship continued to blossom, and although I felt 'love-sick', we were comfortable together (and planned to connect over a folk festival at the end of the summer). I found out that Tony was intrigued by my scholarship, creativity as an artist and questions about life and faith. Shortly after I returned to Toronto, Tony realized that he was falling in love with me. It wasn't until two weeks later (July 10) that he finally confessed (on the phone) how he felt, and he was ecstatic that I felt the same way.

Since we live so far apart, we didn't see each other in person very much and this kept us communicating by e-mail, telephone and I wrote him letters every day. He would send me packages with little gifts, especially when it was my birthday, which had a much larger box! We shard a lot of our dreams for the future. Shortly before the folk festival he met me in Toronto for two days and was able to meet my family. The day before the festival, I was then in Ottawa, and this was the day that Tony proposed. He took me to dinner in an Indian restaurant, then to a luminiere presentation at the parliament buildings (and we went to the French one by mistake), and afterwards we stood staring at the eternal flame together. That was when Tony was going to ask me, but it was too crowded.

Instead he took me to a very romantic spot called Nepean Point, which overlooks the parliament buildings, Rideau canal, the Ottawa river and Hull, Quebec. It was there that he asked me, right in front of the Champlain monument. I was telling him that Champlain arrived in North America in 1608, when he said, "Come here, I have a question to ask you." When he asked, I gave him my answer the very next second. He jokes in our engagement announcement that my fast reply was due to ability in e-mail correspondence. Our engagement day was August 27, 1998, exactly two months after we had met in person.

- Laurie-Ann Zachar
March 1999