She found match on first try; for him, the 26th
Alexandra Marshall was lured into a three-month subscription to a dating site, Match.com, by a special online deal. Special, indeed — a few weeks after she signed up, she met Mike Orndorff, whom she married for the second time last weekend.
Marshall had been focused on her education before she moved back to Arkansas. She’d finished her doctorate in 2012 and got her first job and, back home now, turned her attention to her personal life. She dated a few people over the next year, but “it takes some time to develop any kind of social network and to figure out who you are and what you want, not only out of life but out of relationships, and I was just kind of figuring it out,” she says.
In the spring of 2013, her friends urged her to buy into a Living Social deal for Match. com. Through it, she had a onemonth free trial, during which she went on a couple of dates that weren’t very promising. She geared up to cancel her account.
Match.com offered her three more months for the price of one.
“I’m a sucker for a deal,” she says.
Within a week of renewing, she had run across Orndorff’s profile, which highlighted his preference for some of the same indie rock and folk music she liked. She sent him a message.
He was impressed she was impressed.
“I like a free-spirited but responsible type of woman, and the type of music that someone listens to often demonstrates their personality, whether they are a kind of get-in-line type of person or disagree-with-it-ish,” he says. “So that caught my attention and I checked out her profile, where I saw that she enjoys drinking craft beer and, especially at that time, that was a pastime for me.”
He had been on about 25 first dates and two second dates in the three months he had been on Match.com, and though that’s not a great track record, he was intrigued enough by what he knew of Marshall that he wanted to meet her.
They got together for beers on Memorial Day 2013 at the Flying Saucer.
They hit it off, and went on five more dates together within the week.
He canceled his Match.com membership shortly thereafter.
“I’ve never been a love-atfirst-sight, head-over-heels kind of guy. I’ve always been pretty realistic. I remember telling her — because I didn’t want her to think, ‘This guy’s getting too deep, too fast’ — that even if this didn’t work out I felt like I needed a break from” Match.com.
They became inseparable, hiking and camping and spending time at the dog park with her Brussels Griffons.
“We’re both also foodies and we enjoyed going to restaurants around town and trying new foods,” says Marshall, an assistant professor in the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education at the Fay W. Boozman College of Public Health, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.
Orndorff, typically indecisive about where they eat, told her he wanted to go back to the Flying Saucer one night. He parked his truck in the lot where they had their first kiss, and after they ate they walked along the riverfront, stopping to sit on a bench. That’s where Mike got down on one knee and asked if she would marry him.
“We don’t make impulsive decisions. Almost everything gets talked about, and we had already had the conversation about getting married and worked together to get this ring made,” says Orndorff, a building contractor, who designed the ring out of the family’s heirloom jewelry.
One year from the day they met, on May 27, they exchanged vows at the courthouse in Pulaski County. They repeated their vows during a reception at Heifer Village on Sept. 27.
“We did it this way because weddings are kind of stressful for a lot of people and I just thought, well, let’s just not deal with that,” he says. “Also, we try not to put a whole lot of stock into materialism.”
Marshall wore a white chiffon dress she bought for $29 and considered wearing to a sorority formal about 10 years ago. With it, she wore her mother’s veil.
The couple say their unconventional nuptials made the most sense for them.
“I know that there’s a lot of reasoning behind why people would date for a certain amount of time and then get engaged and then prepare this wedding and get married and then go on a honeymoon,” she says. “That order of events hasn’t really jived with our personal lives and timelines, so we’re just making it up as we go along, but it’s what seems to be working well for us.”