Love blossomed after Kelly Hildebrandt’s online search led to – Kelly Hildebrandt

A couple who met via Facebook will have one less thing to worry about as they tie the knot in the autumn – the changing of surnames.

Late one night last year, Kelly Katrina Hildebrandt, a 20-year-old student from Florida, decided to tap her name into the social networking site to see if anyone shared it. To her surprise, someone did – Kelly Carl Hildebrandt, a 24-year-old financial services worker form Lubbock in Texas.

“She said hi,” said Carl Hildebrandt. “We had the same name. [I] thought it was cool. I thought she was pretty cute.”

After three months of emailing, phone calls and the odd check to make sure they were not long-lost cousins, a real romance developed from their cyber dalliances.

When he visited Katrina Hildebrandt in Florida and met her in the flesh, he said he “fell head over heels”.

A little while later the couple got engaged and are due to get married at a yacht club in South Florida in October. “I totally think that it’s all God’s timing,” said Katrina Hildebrandt. “He planned it out just perfect.”

Carl Hildebrandt was slightly less effusive. “I thought it was fun,” he said of their first online encounter. “I had no idea that it would lead to this.”

Their path to the altar, though, has not been entirely clear of confusion.

A trip on a cruise ship almost got cancelled when the travel agent deleted one ticket from the system, thinking someone had entered the same information twice. There was also a little uncertainty about how to phrase their wedding invitations, so the couple decided to include their middle names.

To keep future mix-ups to a minimum, the Kelly Hildebrandts have already come to an important agreement.

“No,” said Katrina Hildebrandt. “We’re definitely not going to name our kids Kelly.”