Barbara Wood's One the Home Front: True love in the age of the Internet Barbara Wood's One the Home Front: True love in the age of the Internet (August 18, 2004)

Two weeks ago my husband Dan and I found ourselves in a sweltering Filipino Catholic church, he dressed in the traditional Filipino male formal dress, called a barong, and I in the coolest thing I could find, draping a double loop of white rope around the necks of the bride and groom.

Returning to the pews, we stationed ourselves so we could catch as much as possible of the breeze from the floor fans.

The church was a large octagon, with a solid roof but open sides. Three small boys crept up toward the ceremony until they were shooed away, and a large family group sat on the other side of the church, waiting to hold a first Communion service. A quartet, dressed in jeans, shorts and T-shirts, sang much of the ceremony in heavenly voices that cut right through the traffic noises drifting in.

The priest arrived an hour past schedule, and, until someone slipped him some sort of incentive, threatened not to perform a Mass along with the wedding because it wouldn't be fair to make the first Communion wait that long. Apparently the church had been double-booked.

How did we happen to be there?

The magic of the Internet.

The ceremony was for Dan's brother Ed and his wife Rita. The two had married last December in a U.S. civil ceremony, and were repeating their vows in a traditional Filipino Catholic wedding in front of Rita's family. Dan and I represented his family.

Ed had asked Dan to be his best man, before he found out Filipinos don't have such a thing, so instead the two of us did the rope draping and whatever else we were asked.

Ed and Rita's marriage came as a surprise to both their families, who had assumed for years that neither of them would ever marry.

In fact, Dan and I first heard Ed was engaged from a friend who had heard it from his brother, who happened to be the immigration attorney Ed had consulted.

By the time we heard, Ed had already gone to the Philippines, met Rita's family, and invited her here to meet his. His sisters both knew, but he hadn't yet figured out how to tell his mother.

The two met about two years ago. Both had been thinking that they might be ready to find the right person to marry. Rita put a personal ad on Yahoo.com and Ed read it.

They corresponded by e-mail, and then began long, frequent telephone conversations. When they met they decided the long-distance friendship and affection they had developed worked in person as well.

They have more in common than might seem possible for two people brought up in such different places as the Philippines and California. Both came from large, close families; both were raised as Catholics; and neither had ever dated much at all. Both are in their 40s, a year apart, shy and intelligent, and wryly funny.

And both of them would like to have children. We're all keeping our fingers crossed.

Barbara Wood lives in Woodside in an old house with three red-headed teenagers, a work-at-home husband, one full-time and one half-time dog, nine chickens and a fish. Her column runs the third week of the month.

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