Tina Nickerson refused to look at Matthew Truelove's online pictures, preferring to let personality traits override physical appearance.

And she went into their first meeting expecting nothing more than friendship.

"When I saw him, it still wasn't about looks," she said.

But then there "was the look he gave me. ... It was more like he was looking in me, not at me. That did it for me, right there."

The Internet has become the new meeting place for singles, with the emergence of such sites as eHarmony and Match.com, but it can only go so far. Couples can't point and click to advance their relationship - they have to meet and date.

So after spending some time trading e-mails and text messages, couples find themselves wrapped up in all the emotions of the first meeting.

As for the first face-to-face encounter, emotions can range from all-out nervousness, with what-if questions swirling in their heads, to anticipation and excitement.

The relationship between Nickerson and Truelove, both Hall County residents, built over three months before they met at his house with family members in tow.

"I have met a few people offline through the years and usually I am nervous," Nickerson said. "But when I did agree to meet him, I wasn't nervous at all. I felt it was something overdue, like if it was something I didn't do, I would regret it one day."

Truelove, on the other hand, had butterflies. There had been no covering Nickerson's picture on her MySpace.com profile.

"She seemed like a woman who was out of my league," he said. "It just worried me. She's just beautiful - look at her."

When making the transition from electronic to face-to-face communication, Match.com advises men and women to not hurry love. Move from e-mails to phone calls and requesting more photos before setting up the first meeting.

"By not skipping steps, you get to know each other better and avoid the disappointment that can come when you rush things," according to a column on the dating service's Web site.

Other bits of wisdom: Ease up on the e-mails the closer you get to the meeting and don't let a less-than-dazzling phone conversation rule out a potential mate.

Also, the first meeting should take place in a public place and should be geared to something short and simple, such as coffee and dessert. If things click, the date can be extended. If not, the exit is not very far away.

Len Palmer-Davis and Phil Davis, who live in South Hall, found each other on eHarmony and eventually met on Mother's Day at Mall of Georgia, bringing their youngest sons with them.

They walked around the mall, looking in different stores. She stopped to look at a wind catcher.

"I bought it for her and we still have it," Phil Davis said. "It hangs out there on the back deck."

He also felt some nervousness before the meeting.

"You want to make a good impression, and the first impression of somebody is one you remember a whole lot," Davis said. "And it went off really well.

"We talked a lot, and we have a lot of stuff in common. And the biggest thing is Len is a great mom, a great person. Not that I was looking for a mother for my sons, but it was really important to me - and I know it was important to her - that whomever we found, that we all got along really well."

Len said the first encounter wasn't too nerve-wracking.

"I think that's because we had talked so much online," she said.

Only thing that struck her was "he said he's 5-foot-8, and he's really (shorter)," Len said, "and I'm taller than he is. Not by much."

The height issue didn't cast him as Mr. Wrong, however.

"He's a really caring man, a gentleman."

Deanna and Allen Margavich of Gainesville had their first date on May 28, 2006. They had planned to meet at a Mexican restaurant, "but unfortunately it wasn't open at the time."

"We ended up at a bad Chinese place, but the conversation and everything was great," she said.

They had met on Yahoo!'s personals site, seeing how each other looked only through profile pictures.

"We were going at it blind," Deanna said. "You can lie with pictures if you want to."

She felt some anxiety going into the first meeting, "but it was kind of like meeting a long-lost friend," she said. "I had talked to him for so long and we had shared common places - probably at the same time and not knowing each other."

He graduated from North Hall High School in 2001 and Deanna in 2004.

"We could share stories of our favorite teachers. ... At that point, we weren't too emotionally invested, because we had known each other for just two months. But, after that initial meeting, it was like he has been in my life the whole time."

Tina recalled feeling that same electricity.

In an e-mail describing her and Matt's romance, she wrote, "The look in his eyes when they first met mine is unexplainable, and I knew it was the same look I had in mine."

About a month later, "he casually" informed me that I was his," Nickerson wrote.

The Margaviches married in May 2007 and the Davises on Oct. 18.

Nickerson and Truelove, who have children from previous marriages, plan to marry, but they haven't set a date.

"We're trying to put a little bit of time in there for the kids to get used to the combining of the families," Tina said.