The night before their nine-year anniversary in March, high-school sweethearts Theresa Wetzel and Tony Araujo woke up to find cold water pouring into the living room and kitchen of their Centreville home. The main water line had burst and flooded the first floor. They packed their things and headed to Tony’s sister’s house in South Riding while their house dried out. They had made plans to celebrate their anniversary at Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse, and despite the flood, they were determined to keep those plans.

“Tony and I woke up the next day, and he seemed very distracted,” says Theresa, 27, a dance-studio manager. “I thought to myself, ‘The house was flooded, we have to go car shopping because my car was totaled in an unexpected ice storm, and it’s our anniversary, so he must have a lot on his mind.’ ” But the flood and car shopping weren’t all Tony had on his mind. He had a trick up his sleeve the even the flood couldn’t derail. “It put a dent in my pocket, but it didn’t put a wrench in my plan,” says Tony, 26, a superintendent at Arthur Construction Company.

Photo courtesy of Ken Pak, VisualSketch Studio.

For their two-year anniversary in March, Missy Eng and Brian Hyatt, both 26, decided to celebrate with a dinner at the Inn at Little Washington, where they had gone on their first anniversary. Brian made the dinner reservation, booked a room at the Foster Harris House down the street from the inn, and mapped out a scenic route to get there.

Missy, a health-information-technology consultant at CGI, and Brian, a technology consultant at Versivo, met in 2005 when both were working at CGI. They knew each other for more than a year before they started dating, and by the time they reached their two-year anniversary, he was ready to propose.

On their way out to Washington, Virginia, they had lunch and stopped at a few wineries before taking Skyline Drive through the Shenandoah National Forest. “I had a list of places where I wanted to propose on Skyline Drive, but there were other people around at the first few,” Brian says. But finally, he found a stop where they were the only two people there.

Lindsey Rowe doesn’t really remember dancing with Stephen Roberts at her friend Hannah’s wedding in 2006. “I remember a nice guy with lots of curly hair, but I was so absorbed with being a bridesmaid and emotional about my best friend getting married that I think I was just overwhelmed that night,” says Lindsey, 25.

A year after the wedding, Stephen was studying for his master’s degree in divinity in southern California and needed to go to Seattle to do some research. Hannah, who married Stephen’s best friend in Lindsey’s hometown of Seattle, decided to play matchmaker. She suggested Lindsey grab dinner with him and his friends and show them around. “I thought, ‘This girl is scheming, but I want to take a hiatus from dating right now,’ ” Lindsey says. “So I just planned on having fun with a great group of guys and not worrying about any romantic intentions.”

Josh and Courtney on Halloween in 2002.

How do you know when you’ve met your soulmate? (Hint: When he’s already your husband in a Halloween costume.)

On Halloween 2002, Courtney MacGregor and Joshua Coder, students at James Madison University, got invitations to the same party. Courtney and her roommate, Sarah, had brainstormed costumes, trying to think of famous best-friend duos to dress up as. Wilma Flintstone and Betty Rubble were the winning choice. “Those costumes were surprisingly easy to put together on a college budget,” says Courtney, 26. “I had a real dog bone tied into my ponytail.”

When Courtney and Sarah arrived at the party, they spotted a familiar face across the room. There was Josh, dressed as Fred Flintstone. Courtney turned to Sarah and said, “I found my Fred!” The matching costumes were a conversation starter, and the two realized they had some friends in common. They took a photo of themselves that night, not knowing they’d look back on their fateful Flintstone matchup for years to come.

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Four years ago, Laura LoGerfo and Vincent Pickett ended up together at the gay-pride parade through a mutual friend who had just moved to DC. “Vincent was with his girlfriend at the time, expressing quite explicitly that he was straight,” Laura says. And Laura was there with her boyfriend, whom Vincent took to be her brother at first glance. Vince piqued Laura’s interest, but their mutual friend steered her away.

“I queried our mutual friend about Vince—cute, smart, funny?” says Laura, 32. “Our friend didn’t want to be caught in the middle of social-network warfare if we tried to date and it failed.” Understandable, but that just made the fire flicker brighter, Laura says. “Thus, enter the great chemistry maker of forbidden love.”

In July 2003, Sarah Szabo packed her bags for DC. She’d graduated from Virginia Tech that winter, moved to Pittsburgh, and then broken up with her college boyfriend. “For a young girl trying to get over a breakup,” she says. “Pittsburgh’s just not the city to do so.” She settled on DC, hoping to live the single life with all of her friends in a new city. So when her roommate, Wendy, wanted to introduce her to a family friend named Chris who happened to live in their building, Sarah politely declined. But a few weeks later, she heard a knock on the door.

“I was thinking two things,” says Sarah, 28. “One, don’t open the door the whole way—you just moved to a new city, and he could be a serial killer. And two, this is Chris? Wow, he’s really cute! Had I known how good-looking he was, I would’ve introduced myself weeks ago.”

Chris Myers introduced himself and told Sarah that he knew Wendy and wanted to come up to welcome them to the building. “I didn’t have a friend in the building when I originally moved in,” says Chris, 30. “I figured it’d be nice as a newcomer to have someone to borrow sugar from. And I was kind of hoping Wendy’s roommate would be cute—and she was!”