Finding the one person on the planet who fills your heart with joy was no problem for Holly Caraway and Ross Kennedy of Anchorage.
They registered on eHarmony.com about a year ago and quickly rejected all the other wannabes. After a couple weeks of e-mails and phone calls, they met when Kennedy lost a bet on the 2007 Super Bowl. He put his money on the Bears; she bet on the winning Colts. So he picked up the tab for Mongolian barbecue on their first date.
On the long drive to Homer, Alaska, a couple months later - Caraway bartered a chandelier on Craigslist for a stay at a bed and breakfast - they hashed out their feelings about marriage and children and found themselves perfectly aligned.
Well, almost. She thinks two or three children would be good. He’s up for 10. Time will tell.
But one thing is certain - they’ll marry March 22.
“eHarmony is a thoughtful approach to dating someone,” said Caraway, 24. “It matches peoples’ morals and characters. It’s sort of a pretest to see if they qualify.”
She was still somewhat cautious about meeting someone over the Internet.
“I Googled him to make sure he wasn’t a crazy criminal.” And after learning where he worked, she drove by to check him out, even though she said it made her feel like a bit of a stalker.
Caraway is known locally for her prowess in air riflery. Setting records and winning titles in the sport in high school earned her a scholarship to University of Nevada at Reno. As a member of the UNR Rifle Team, she earned the All-American Air Rifle title in 2004.
Both she and her sister, Kaydee, honed their shooting skills while growing up in Beluga, Alaska. Their parents, Candie and Joe Caraway, own T.C. Lewis Lodge in the tiny town across Cook Inlet, 40 miles southwest of Anchorage.
“Dad always took us hunting, trapping and fishing,” Holly Caraway said. “He raised us like boys.”
She bagged her first moose at 11 and her first bear before she hit her teens.
That wilderness moxie is partly the reason Kennedy, 26, was drawn to her profile when it surfaced as a match with his. He was an avid hunter of deer, pheasants and quail in his home state of Kansas and was looking for someone “outdoorsy” to do things with when he signed up on eHarmony.
Kennedy is a relatively new transplant to Alaska. Fed up with the limited job opportunities in Kansas, he and a buddy drove to Valdez in the dead of winter in 2005.
“We picked Valdez because it was close to the ocean, and it’s a small town,” he said. “I’m kind of a small-town person.”
The good news? They got jobs immediately. The bad news? The job was snow shoveling in a town with an average annual snowfall of 325 inches.
Kennedy moved to Anchorage and joined the Laborers Union, and his buddy went back to farming in Kansas.
He met Caraway just before Valentine’s Day last year, and they ordered the engagement ring from eBay by fall. Kennedy proposed on bended knee at Beluga Point - on Cook Inlet - on a cold, windy night after dinner at a restaurant.
“I couldn’t feel my hands or nose; it was Oct. 4; we were freezing,” Caraway said. “It was perfect.”
These days, the happy couple spends every spare minute getting ready for their big day. A wedding magazine cover helped them set the theme.
“There was this wedding book with birch trees, all white, on the cover,” Caraway said.
An ad on Craigslist netted a nearby landowner willing to let them cut birches from his property.
Kennedy has been spray-painting the 10-foot trees white, drilling holes in the trunks and fitting branches wherever they look a little bare. The trees, set in cement stands, will line the hall; smaller birches will serve as table centerpieces.
They’ve sent 150 handmade invitations, and wine for their reception is ripening at Denali Winery in Anchorage. When it’s ready, they’ll pour it into unmarked bottles and affix their own labels.
One recent night, they started ironing the 20,000 silk rose petals they bought in bulk on the Internet. They’ll string them on monofilament and hang them to soften the hall’s edges.
“It’s not like just getting married and that’s it,” Kennedy said. “You get all the fun with it.”
And the wedding music?
“We’re playing the theme song from eHarmony for the recessional, `This Will Be an Everlasting Love,’” Caraway said. “When we walk back down the aisle, that will be our song.”
Tags:
cement,
centerpiece,
money,
rta,
s south
0
