I fade back for the passing of the bouquet like my favorite Viking Fran Tarkenton, while Mona wonders why she just married such an eccentric! (Actually, she laughed, which is why I love her so much!)

The way you wept when you met brother John;

You, touched so by his woeful reverie,

I saw so deeply into your soul anon,

A sensitive spirit of empathy.

How I could not love you was the thought.

I found at last someone who understood

The pain and suffering my family’s fought;

someone to not flinch peering under the hood;

A lover so always open with feeling;

A friend so free with time and attention;

Yet, a partner who often leaves me reeling

To dizzying bliss, but thoughts to run.

Still, through stress and conflict I feel we’ll heal.

It’s why at our beach I came with ring to kneel.

That’s the sonnet I wrote for Mona just weeks before our wedding weekend. It pretty much explains why I fell so in love with her, but in case it’s too cryptic, or too personal, I’ll recap. A lot of folks have been asking me how we met since our wedding last week.

It’s a very good meet-cute, but I’m sometimes a little bashful sharing all of the details, because it involves a typo and Mona’s such a professional she gets a little embarrassed.

One night while I was working late at the Daily Pilot — a not too uncommon occurrence back then since there had been so many layoffs — I received an e-mail from Mona. It was about the inaugural Orange County Restaurant Week. As I said there had been a lot of layoffs, and most notable at that time was the departure of Tony Dodero, Batman to my Robin. He was the paper’s true ambassador, spending so much time reaching out to the community. I felt I had to fill the void, so when I received this e-mail from Mona I checked it over to see if there was a local angle I could use for the paper. I saw a number of local restaurants, including Skosh Monahan’s in Costa Mesa. But I noticed it was spelled Skosh Monohan, a common misspelling of Hizzoner’s name. Since Gary Monahan is such a well-known person in the community I thought I’d better tell this publicist about the typo. What was going through my mind? Well, I was trying to reach out to the community more, like Tony did, and I wanted to do this stranger a favor, just to be nicer, to be more friendly.

Quick, came the reply, to my surprise. She thanked me and quipped that she was surprised she missed an opportunity to type out Mona in “Monahan.” I thought that was damned clever and told her so, and the dialogue began.

Mona, being arguably the best publicist in Orange County (and certainly one of the best I’ve worked with — ever), took the opportunity to pitch me on another story. It was a great one, and I desperately needed a story just like it for the weekend paper.

Some weeks later Mona called me — she was still just a voice at the other end of the phone at that time as I had never met her — and she asked me if I was on Facebook. I told her I was, but she replied she couldn’t find me. My name’s too common. So I found her and added her as a friend. And a funny thing happened, our mostly professional relationship turned more casual online. I got to know her better. She seemed even more clever and fun that I’d imagined. But I was really a novice Facebooker. I had come late to that party. When I was in Washington, D.C., to cover President Obama’s inauguration, my friends Dave and Mary kicked my butt for not being on the social networking sites. My excuses that I found Friendster and MySpace lame didn’t fly with them. Mary convinced me to join Facebook and other sites as an experiment so I could promote my blogging. My traffic doubled in one day. I was hooked.

As I said, though, I was a novice and I didn’t dig into her profile to see what she looked like — the only picture of her that I saw was a jokey one of her with a wig on. (I realize I’ve told this story before, but for those who don’t know it I’m offering more details…) One evening when she organized a cooking demonstration at South Coast Plaza she left me a voicemail demanding I attend. Like most Friday nights I had a mountain of work to do, but on top of that I was also working on a major project. Still, something told me, “Go. See what she’s like.”

At this point in my life I had given up on dating. Since I was a teenager I would daydream about getting married and starting a family. Just about every night I would fade off to sleep with that daydream. I did that for years. But I never met my soulmate. Lord knows I tried. When one girlfriend broke up with me two weeks after my father died it left me in unbearable pain for a week. Then I decided I would be more aggressive. I signed up for speed-dating and online dating sites. It was like an episode of “Sex And the City.” It was just as ridiculous as it sounds. All I met were crazy people. One woman called me the day after one of our dates to break it off. I knew something was off the night before and when she called I knew what was coming. So when she said, “Do you want to talk about it?” I simply replied, “Nope.” I wished her well and hung up. She sounded shocked. But why? If she couldn’t tell me something like that to my face then she wouldn’t make much of a friend either.

I gave up on dating. Officially. If someone came along who knocked me off my feet then great. If not, so be it. I had to get on with my life. And so I did. I managed to find solace in friendships and to bear the loneliness. I gave up the nightly daydream. I carried on.

Still. Something told me, go down to South Coast Plaza that night. Meet her. See what she’s like. So I did. I parked on the wrong side of the mall, though, and when I finally got across the bridge to the other side of the shopping center her demonstration was just about over. I saw a woman there with her back to me who might be Mona, so I sort of mumbled, “Excuse me, are you Mona?” She spun around — and hugged me! I had finally seen her, and what was the first thought that popped into my mind? “She’s out of my league. Maybe we can be friends.” And she was there with her friend, who I mistakenly thought was her beau. Anyway, we talked for hours. That would come to be the norm for us. Later, she invited me to dinner at the Winery, one of her clients, and we talked until they closed. Then we went out to the parking lot and talked for a few hours more. The next day the staff at the Winery was teasing her.

Still, dummy me didn’t get it. I thought she was just interested in a friendship. We went to see “Slumdog Millionaire,” and then another night we went bowling and had a blast. And after one of those pseudo-dates, I had decided I was going to tell her how I felt. I was smitten, and she needed to know, whether she wanted to reciprocate or not. But I choked. I was too out of practice, just too rusty. So I went home, cursing myself. I vowed I’d tell her next time I saw her.

When I got home, I checked my e-mail, and there it was — a request, from Mona: “Would you like to go on a date with me?”

I jumped. I had to come up with a witty retort, right? I mean, that was part of our flirting, right? Wrong. I reflected for a long moment and then it came to me: Dummy, you don’t have to be witty. I simply replied, “I’d love to.” One of my best friends, who was one of my groomsmen, told me, “Thank God, you didn’t say something stupid, you dope.”

On one of our very first dates — officially, of course — I blurted out, “I love you.” Now, I’m not too casual with that expression. I don’t just toss it around. And I sure as hell understand that when you say it you better mean it. I didn’t plan it, and I immediately panicked. I worried she would think I was cloying, or desperate, or, I don’t know, PSYCHO. But she laughed softly and said, “I love you too.”

Several months later I moved in. Two years later we tied the knot (an expression that has its roots in Hindu weddings, by the way. Did you know that? I didn’t until our priest told us on our wedding day).

I have many more stories to tell you from our wonderful wedding weekend, and I promise to relay them in the coming days. I’m sorry I’ve been so lax with my blogging. But, as you can see, I had a wedding to plan with my soulmate!

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