Kristi Copeland, 35, corporate sales, and Richard Bains, 39, fund manager, married on August 30, 2009

Their first date was a bike ride around Richmond Park. Their second, a 7am run in Hyde Park. Only by date three did Richard and Kristi finally meet for dinner.

A shared passion for sport first drew them, three and a half years ago, to each other’s profiles on a dating website. Kristi, after a bad experience, had let her membership lapse when she received a message from Richard and then had to re-register. She hoped she might have found a companion for running or bicycle rides. “I had just moved to London from Canada,” she says. “I didn’t know many people here, and out of the people I did know there were not many with whom I could go for a run or a bike ride. In Vancouver, everyone is involved in team sports or goes for runs or bike rides after work. Here, people go for drinks.”

By the time she returned from their dinner, Kristi was convinced she had met the man she would marry. He did not feel the same: after six weeks of dating, Richard sent an e-mail to Kristi to say he no longer wished to see her as more than a friend.

“I just really wasn’t ready for a commitment,” he says. Angry and understandably upset, Kristi did not talk to Richard for three months, but gradually they renewed contact and, just under two years ago, ended up on the same skiing trip, organised with a group of eight friends, to Whistler in British Columbia.

By New Year’s Eve, Kristi was quite distressed. “Nothing had happened and I was hoping to get back with Rich. I said to his friend, ‘He is obviously not interested so I am going to go and stay elsewhere’.” Richard’s friend had a quiet word and Richard got back with Kristi.

Three months later she moved in. By August, Richard was thinking of proposing and had initially thought about doing so after competing in an Iron Man triathlon in Norway — a 4km swim, 180km bike ride and a marathon. “But I was not in any condition to do so afterwards.” He finally decided to propose in December 2008 while on a two-week cycling trip in Chile and Argentina and popped the question the night he returned.

The big decision was where to marry? In Whistler, in Vancouver or in Britain? In the end they opted to marry in Kelowna, Kristi’s home town in British Columbia.

All was on track when, five days before their wedding, Kristi suffered an accident. “I was chasing my parents’ dog around their pool, and my dad had taken the cover off the pool filter to clean it,” she says. Kristi tripped and ended up with her leg in the hole and severing a muscle above the knee. “I had to have 50 stitches under anaesthetic in the hospital,” she says. Due to wear a short wedding dress, she feared her wedding day would be ruined. But skilful management of the bandage meant it did not distract from the wedding dress in pictures. “I hobbled up the aisle,” she says. They wed in the garden of close friends of her parents and held a reception at the Manteo Resort.

The pair went to Vancouver Island for a five-day break in Tofino, and later to Africa, where they trekked with silverback gorillas in Rwanda, visited the Grumeti Reserve in the Serengeti and went scuba-diving in Zanzibar — all in just 12 days. “That’s us: we like to be on the go constantly,” says Kristi. She admires Richard’s “dedication to everything that’s important to him — it’s inspiring”. Rich says: “Krist is beautiful, good fun, and we never argue.” Kristi concludes: “We fit each other like a glove.”