Julie Gorinson met Aaron Brand in 2002 at a DC bar where her sorority and his fraternity were hosting a party together. A mutual friend introduced them, and by the end of the night, Aaron, then a senior at the University of Maryland, asked Julie, a sophomore, for her number. “I wowed her with my dance moves and pickup lines, and that was the beginning of it,” says Aaron, 27, a law student at American University.

Aaron called Julie a few days later, and they went on their first date to a bar in College Park. “We spent a good chunk of the night playing Pacman,” he says. “I let her beat me, hoping that would make her more friendly toward me. It worked.”

The two dated through the year, and after Aaron graduated, he headed to Philadelphia for a year to work on a political campaign and she went to study abroad in Madrid. “We did the long-distance thing for a while before Aaron was offered a job on the Hill working as a legislative aide, and he came back to DC—to his true love, me, and politics,” says Julie, 25, a third-grade teacher in Potomac.

After catching an early-morning Southwest Airlines flight to Tampa, all La Tosha Lewis wanted to do was catch some shut eye. But as she tried to drift back to sleep, her boyfriend, Aleksandr Plavnik, wouldn’t let her. “He kept bothering me and waking me up,” says La Tosha, 34. So she told Aleksandr, 32, that if he was going to keep her up, he needed to entertain her.

Little did La Tosha know she was in for the show of her life.

While she had dozed off at the beginning of the flight, Aleksandr sneaked out of his seat to tell the flight attendants about the in-flight proposal plan he had hatched. La Tosha, an education lobbyist, and Aleksandr, an architect, were headed to Tampa, her hometown, for a friend’s wedding. “I was looking all over the Internet for different places and ways to propose,” he says. “Then my mom suggested that I do it at the very beginning of the trip on the plane, and as a bonus, those over-seat lights will make this ring sparkle very nicely. I knew it would set the tone for the whole vacation.” 

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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