“I had a friend who had also been on an online Christian dating site and had met her husband, and she encouraged me to go…” Lauren joined Christian Connection with the hope of a similar connection. She didn’t yet know Kevin, who was soon to prepare his own dating profile and begin his search! “I was ready for marriage,” Kevin said, “I knew what I was looking for. And I thought, I’ve tried online dating before, but I had never tried Christian online dating.”
Lauren found the joining process straightforward and the format helpful: “It was really great to have all the different questions to answer. And I really gave it my best shot.” She felt that she’d have a good chance of connecting with someone who had put similar effort into their profile: “I also wanted to find someone who was also going to be doing the same thing. You’re writing out a really good profile and answering all the questions and actually wanted to be on the site and was looking for someone else.”
Kevin had a slightly different approach: “I was using the phone app. And I thought it was a really good app. Well designed, simple, easy to use, easy to sign up, well built. I didn’t really need to use the laptop.” But he also appreciated the format, “There were lots of different really interesting questions on the profiles that made you sort of illustrate who you are on or choose not to answer that was really great.”
He was strategic about how he completed his profile as well as what he was looking for: “I wanted to see on someone else’s profile what I thought was important, and I tried to replicate that in my profile, as well. I just wanted to see what people really said about their faith, what they said about their journey in life… Lauren’s profile was pretty much top of my list.”
Lauren had been sure what she wrote and how she searched reflected her relationship goals: “Just making sure those values were there, someone who loved their family, and just as much as I love mine, and that that was going to be an important part of their life… and then that they were going to church, you know, regularly on a Sunday each week.”
She liked the qualities in Kevin’s profile. “What stood out to me about Kevin’s he was adventurous, and he also said he was the loudest cheerleader for his friends. You know, if he was out at a game of basketball or, or like cricket or soccer, any of his friends’ games, he wanted to be the loudest cheerleader. So that was that was pretty cool, knowing that he was going to be really supportive of his friends.” And, she adds, “also looking at like what Kevin had put on his description of his faith was just a clincher for me, knowing that he was really wanting to follow the Lord.”
Kevin remembers Lauren, “had a great profile, very descriptive, lots of photos. You just get a very accurate picture of the person she is as much as possible from a one dimensional two dimensional screen. “It made me want to go further,” he said.
After Kevin initiated contact with a wave, they began to communicate. “It was quite a while, nearly a month, before we actually started doing video calls and actually being able to actually see each other,” Lauren recalls, but a spontaneous decision meant they met in person before that! “I was coming through to go home to Queensland for holidays. We met at the airport, so we hadn’t actually video called or even spoken to each other verbally bother texting until we met in person at the airport.”
Lauren’s engagement ring after Kevin’s proposal
Describing it as a “great opportunity”, Kevin remembers, “I picked her up from the airport, and then took her out for dinner that night and then dropped her off back to the airport the next day morning. So I made the most of my time that I could… it was perfect timing. It was all orchestrated by God.”
Their relationship developed quickly. “I think I knew pretty early onwards, actually,” Lauren says, “I guess I didn’t want to muck around. So I was I was pretty keen to get moving into a relationship that I thought was going to last.”
Kevin agrees: “I had very simple criteria. And Lauren met them all very quickly. And I was just enjoying the friendship and the company. It was natural. I didn’t have to make things up. I didn’t have to think of things to talk about. And I just thought, I don’t have to look anymore… And there was literally no doubt in my mind. So Lauren made it very easy.”
Engagement followed soon after. “He said that he booked a special place for us for a dinner,” Lauren remembers. “Kevin was just really nervous… And then yeah, we were went up to the restaurant in the sky. It was the top revolving restaurant in Perth, the only one and we had this fantastic view. Just beautiful…”
Kevin and Lauren on their wedding day
After saying yes to Kevin’s proposal, wedding preparations began. “I had six months from when we got engaged to when we got married to organise things from a different state,” says Lauren, “So I was racing around, trying on wedding dresses. I always like to have things completed early and Kevin kept me settled a lot of the time, which was great. And yeah, just everything flowed well. And the day was just beautiful.”
“Yeah, it was an wonderful day,” agrees Kevin “It was one of the best days of my life. I loved it. My parents were there from Perth. My grandparents came from India. An uncle came from India, cousins came from Melbourne and family from Melbourne as well, and friends from Perth. My brother came from Perth and it was just an awesome celebration… Yeah, it was just perfect. It was so good. Yeah, I loved it. Every minute.”
Kevin and Lauren on honeymoon
Then came the honeymoon! Lauren says, “We honeymooned straightaway after our wedding in Vietnam for two weeks, which was fantastic. It was just amazing and beautiful scenery, just to relax. We didn’t want to be doing too much. We just rested after such a whirlwind year.”
“I love Vietnam a lot,” says Kevin, “It was such a fantastic time…. Some amazing restaurants and food and we just loved the central highlands. It was mountain and hilly country with beautiful lakes was just, it was known for its romantic sort of nature, nature, so picturesque spot, and it was it didn’t disappoint one bit.”
Since then, Kevin and Lauren have bought a house and are settling into regular life. “I’ve really enjoyed being down here in Perth,” says Lauren, “and for Kevin and I just to explore. We will have coffee out or breakfast out on a Saturday morning at one of our favourite cafes just around the corner.…Yeah, it’s just been wonderful to be down here with him instead of being long distance for so long.”
They are both positive about their online dating experiences. “I think definitely give a Christian online dating site a go,” says Lauren. “You are in control of the situation. You don’t have to talk to anyone, if you don’t want to, and then you can communicate with the ones whose profiles really stick out to you. Just really look at what the profile says and align your values.”
Kevin agrees: “Just give it a go. It’s easy, simple. It’s not confrontational. And if you don’t like it, you really lost nothing. And there’s a lot of wonderful people on there. So it’s a great way it’s a real blessing to have the sort of technology now a days where we can do this. So yeah, give it a go.”
WATCH more #MetOnCC couples’ short stories here and in-depth interviews here
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