John Ricksen vividly remembers the day in 2001 when he met his wife, Dina: "She smiled and the smile stuck with me," he says. "I never really forgot about her." But Dina, who was seeing someone else, admits she really doesn't recall their first meeting.

Through his cousin—Dina's sorority sister—John managed to cross paths with her several times, but it wasn't until a year later, emboldened by reports that Dina was single, that the UC Santa Barbara student dragged buddies to a bar near her college, UC Berkeley, in hopes of running into her. Dina appeared, and John spent a half-hour trying to muster courage. "I really couldn't," he concedes. Luckily, when John moved closer on the chance she'd recognize him, "That strategy actually did work."

Dina accepted an invitation to hear John's band play. Although it was uncharacteristic for her to go alone, Dina had "a really strong feeling" this was "something that I needed to do." By the next evening, "We both knew that this was going to be something serious," she says.

On a typical workday in the spring of 2007, John suddenly decided, "This is the day," and he sped to a jeweler. That Friday, when Dina described a scene as fairytale-like during their Point Reyes hike, John asked if she'd like water: an excuse to get down on his knee and reach into his backpack. "We're both emotional people," John says. "I was already crying. I don't even know if I said, 'Will you marry me?' We cried the rest of the day and night."

Both are from large, tight-knit, California football fan families, so they set their date for fall's one football-free Saturday. Dina knew the Hope Ranch home her father designed with his children's weddings in mind would be the setting for their celebration, which she, her mother and planner, Colette Lopez, designed to feel intimate, even though the guests numbered 250.

As they joined hands atop the bluffs, their officiant read letters they'd written describing "things we appreciate about each other," says Dina, whose words praised John's "drive, his creativity, his ability to make me feel extremely loved." White confetti exploded at the ceremony's conclusion, and the party moved to the front lawn for cocktails, then the sunken garden for a buffet, cake and dancing. Dina's father provided the emotional evening's comic interlude, as he confused the names of the bride and groom repeatedly while delivering a speech he claimed to have swiped from father of the bride dot com.

Dina implored, "Can we please stay?" as a tunnel of sparklers illuminated the path to their horse-drawn getaway carriage. "I had the same feeling of never wanting the night to end," John says.

After a ten-day Tahitian honeymoon, the newlyweds returned to their Golden Gate Bridge-view apartment. Dina teaches Pilates; John is starting a new job in sales. Dina, he says, "gives me the confidence and the love that carries me through any situation." Had he not connected with her that night at the Bear's Lair, John says he wouldn't have abandoned his quest. "One way or the other, I needed to know if this person was the one."

Written by Kim Knox Beckius