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hollywood types often say a couple in a romantic movie “met cute.” Kelli Michaelson and Nik Braese can say they “met wet.” In fact, they were both stuck in a Florida hotel, without light or electricity, hunkering down as Hurricane Katrina passed over Miami.
    Both were new employees of a company that scheduled a conference during hurricane season because the hotel rates were reduced, Kelli recalled. Even so, they were each excited to be traveling as part of their new jobs.

MARRIED:

   Oct. 16, 2009

   Bald Head Island

Wedding day rain was a reminder of their soggy meeting

Photo by Anne McGowan

Ceremony: Bald Head Island Chapel
Photographer: Anne McGowan

    It was just their luck that, on Aug. 25, 2005, Hurricane Katrina came ashore in south Florida. Though only a Category 1 at this stage — well before it devastated the Louisiana and Mississipi Gulf Coast — the storm still had enough punch to knock out power to much of the hotel.
    Kelli’s room was dark, she explained, and she had to take a cold shower lit only by a flashlight. “I couldn’t dry my hair or iron my shirt,” and she went to the front desk to ask about where she could find a working electrical outlet. “Nik was there asking the same question. We decided to walk to the correct room together, and hit it off from
there — despite my probably haggard appearance.”
    After returning to their homes and jobs, the two stayed in touch by email and went to dinner a couple of times during company meetings in Chicago, “Until I visited him about six months later. The rest is history.”
    After their Bald Head Island wedding, the couple reside just outside Cincinnati.