An unconventional romance

TAKING THINGS SITTING DOWN Cabrera and Amora find love through a mobile app.

CEBU CITY — Art teacher Kevin Cabrera and graduating psychology major Daisy Mae Amora are planning to get married next year,  initially in civil ceremonies and later, in church.

But Cabrera, 25, has yet to propose and plans to do so just as soon as he has a pizza costume made.

It turns out that Amora, 21, had a dream where a pizza proposes to her, a whimsical idea that her fiance would gladly oblige.

After all, their love story has been less conventional than most romances, so what’s one more twist in a series of unexpected turns?

The couple met through the mobile dating app, OKCupid.com, with Amora taking the initiative of sending Cabrera a message.

And it was not because she found him attractive, but because she was interested in photography.

“She was interested in me because my profile said that I used to teach basic photography, which I did,” Cabrera recalled.

When he first saw her, he thought she was jailbait: Amora looked like a teenager and was as bubbly as one.

Tutorial sessions

Instead of dates, they had tutorial sessions on photography. After all, she was seeing a Briton at the time while he was dating a bartender.

When Amora learned a month later that Cabrera had stopped seeing the bartender, she took matters into her own hands.

He was showing her how to handle a camera when she asked him a question: Did he find her attractive?

Taken aback, he had managed to answer “Yes.”

“She then hugged my foot with both her feet and proceeded to ask if i would be interested to date her,” Cabrera recalled.

Since they were already friends, he agreed.

Looking back, Cabrera said it was the “best decision” he had ever made.

They’re quite young, he acknowledged, but then he had always wanted to start a family early, Cabrera said, adding that he wanted to be fit and young enough to play with his children.

Health issues

He recalled how his parents didn’t have time for him and his brother due to their work. When they did manage to go to Disneyland, their parents couldn’t get on the rides with them because of health issues.

He wants to be a parent in his 20s, says this fine arts graduate of the University of the Philippines College in Cebu. Looking for the right woman, he’s dated quite a few and even signed up with online dating sites and apps to find a match.

“I always had luck meeting new girls in those sites,” he said. “They were fun but not what I was looking for.”

So eager was he to start a family that Cabrera even thought of finding a surrogate mother whose child he would gladly care for.

But then came Amora. The couple has been together for a year and half now.

To people who deem them too young to find true love, Cabrera has a ready reply: “It is not about how long you’ve been (a couple),” he said. “It’s the quality of time (you’ve spent together).”

They’ve helped each other achieve their dream, he added.

“She’s a graduating college student and I helped her with her research papers and thesis. In turn, she helped me with my studies for my upcoming licensure exam for teachers,” Cabrera said.

“I think it’s better to start early with nothing yet and help each other achieve their goals,” said Cabrera, who dreams of putting up his second one-man show while continuing with his teaching job. Amora wants to be a clinical psychologist while doing photography on the side.

Right now, he’s saving for her dream wedding — she in a sexy wedding gown with the reception on a cliff overlooking the sea.

Compared to that, their plan on Valentine’s Day this Wednesday sounds positively prosaic: unlimited chicken wings and a “Black Panther” movie later.

The movie is for him while the food is for her.