Canadian Katie Donovan planned to settle into a teaching job and new home following graduation from Illinois State in 2006until, that is, she realized that she hadn't applied for a green card in time. When her agent suggested playing professional basketball in Luxembourg, she accepted overnight. And when teammates introduced her to fellow hoopster Tim Giver at Schuberfouer—an enormous fair—she didn't hesitate when he demanded, "Where are my kisses?"

"No problem," Katie responded, not yet accustomed to Luxembourgers' traditional greeting of a trio of cheek-to-cheek pecks. As they soared above the city on one of the fair’s whirling rides, Tim's reassuring embrace put Katie at ease. "It was a spark I'd never felt before," she says.

"We saw we were made for each other," says Tim, whose plans to propose at the fifteenth-century castle overlooking their village were deterred by rain. Instead, with Katie at practice, Tim hand-plucked petals from one hundred roses, lit countless candles and prepared dinner. "Please don't be nervous," Katie urged as he bent to his knee. When the showers subsided, they climbed to the castle's turret with champagne and Etta James and dozed dreamily until 4 a.m. when church bells rang.

Lumber, stain and truckloads of fill aren't on most brides' wish lists, but Katie had visualized marrying barefoot at her family's vacation home on Canada's Buck Lake since childhood. "My parents worked so hard" transforming the swampy, forested lakeshore into a grassy beach, Katie raves. As 08/08/08 neared, "We all had tool belts on," says Katie, who was staining the bar when the tent crew arrived. "I don't think they knew I was the bride," she laughs, adding: "When you do some of the work, it's more meaningful."

As rain drenched the wedding day they'd selected, Katie feared she'd have to scrap her entrance on horseback. But by late afternoon, 80 multilingual guests arrived and, "It was sunny," says Katie, who'd chanced upon her gown in a French shop window and was astounded it fit her athletic figure perfectly. More so, that designer, Ann Wiberg, was also in Cannes and available to embellish the bodice with beadwork the very next day. "I wanted to kiss her right away," Tim recalls about seeing Katie arrive. This time, she cautioned: "Not yet."

After a seven-course Luxembourgish dinner, "We danced the night away," says Katie, who donned Hunter boots to combat the dampness. The look, she says, "was who I am—only Katie would wear rubber boots at her wedding.” Guests reconvened for a lakeside barbecue the next day. And after two restful weeks, the newlyweds returned to Europe, where it rained on their civil ceremony and formal castle reception. "It was fun having two different types of weddings," says Katie, who wore "nice shoes" this time.

They had to defer a Grand Canary Island honeymoon until Christmastime due to work and basketball commitments. Their schedules are hectic and the potential for language-related miscommunication omnipresent, although, unlike Katie's Luxembourgish, "Tim's English has tremendously improved." Yet, as she recalls seeing her wedding celebration unfold exactly as she'd imagined, Katie realizes sharing "these moments with my soul mate" transcends words. "I can tell he loves me more than anything," she says.

> Written by Kim Knox Beckius