Dawna LoPiccolo and John Mraz met on Christmas Day 2001 at Ground Zero. Now, less than six month later, the couple will be getting married at the sacred site that brought them together.

LoPiccolo, a divorced massage therapist originally from Levittown, began volunteering at Ground Zero immediately following the attacks. She typically celebrated Christmas Day with her grandmother, but her passing earlier that year had LoPiccolo looking to go back to the city. "If my grandmother were still alive, I would not have left her side," said LoPiccolo, 35. "For some reason, something was pulling me there."

Mraz, a widowed New York City firefighter with Engine Company 248 in Flatbush, was also working that day. He was not, however, scheduled to be at Ground Zero, but ended up being reassigned when another department was in need of an extra man to work at the site. "It was such a weird day," said Mraz, 43. "I wasn't supposed to be there, but they needed an extra guy."

Toward the end of the day, Mraz was the last of the many firemen to get his massage. When LoPiccolo was done, Mraz gave her a hug and wrote, "It was worth the wait" on LoPiccolo's hard hat. Several days later both LoPiccolo and Mraz, unbeknownst to one another, called another firefighter they both knew asking about the other. "I knew he was the one the second I met him," said LoPiccolo.

They began dating after New Years and a month ago, LoPiccolo and her 2-year-old daughter moved in with Mraz and his 7-year-old son. They will be getting married later this month at Ground Zero, during a 15-minute ceremony under the metal beams that had formed a cross after the towers collapsed. They will be holding off on having the reception until September.

"We don't feel it is too soon," said LoPiccolo. "The kids were missing each other, we were missing one another and we wanted to give the kids the proper foundation. They were the deciding factor and it's like they've given us their blessing."

The whole thing, said LoPiccolo, is a little overwhelming. "Neither one of us was supposed to be down there that day," she said. "He got transferred and I had stopped working at Ground Zero. In fact, my I.D. had expired, but they remembered I had been down there and let me in. John was the first person I saw and the last person I massaged."

The fates were also with the couple when it came time to purchase LoPiccolo's wedding band. "I went to Littman [Jewelers] because my sister has been using them for years," said LoPiccolo. "It was the first ring I tried on. It's antique-looking and reminds me of my grandmother's. I fell in love with it."

Although she continued to look at other rings, LoPiccolo's heart was on the first one she tried on and the couple put a $300 deposit down on the ring at the Broadway Mall jewelry store. When LoPiccolo's sister, Lauri Pagano, learned where the ring was from, she called to see if they would give LoPiccolo and Mraz a better deal.

"I was under the impression they had bought it, but a couple of days later [associate] Maryann [Williams] told me their story," said Lois Sabatella, Littman manager. "Then [LoPiccolo's] sister called asking if there was something we could do about the price. It turned out she is a frequent customer of ours."

Rather than giving the couple a break on the nearly $1,900 platinum and diamond ring, Littman gave them the ring for free. According to Sabatella, it seemed like the most appropriate thing to do. "It almost seemed funny to just give them a discount," she said. "They were there to help and that is what they represent. This is kind of like a thank you to them for helping us."

LoPiccolo was shocked when she learned what the store was doing. "I am so touched," she said. "It's such a nice gesture and a little overwhelming."

Although the couple has decided to get married at Ground Zero, LoPiccolo said the decision to do so was not an easy one to make. "We've been going back and forth - should we, shouldn't we," she said. "This is one of the most spiritual places for us to get married. We want to say thank you and pay our respects to the people who brought us together." She added, "We feel like it is the only proper place to acknowledge where we met [and] to show people that something positive came out of this. It gives people hope."

Mraz agreed, saying, "It is a place of honor. So many men died in the line of duty. It holds a lot of symbolism."

In addition to meeting LoPiccolo at Ground Zero, the Sept. 11 attacks also hold another sacred place in Mraz's life. On top of losing more than 20 friends and colleagues in the attacks, Sept. 11 was the firefighter's first day back to work following his wife's death eight months earlier.

For both LoPiccolo and Mraz, the situation is sometimes hard to believe. "We talk about it all the time," said LoPiccolo. "We think it was fate. His biggest fear was to raise his son alone and we think maybe his wife sent me to him on Christmas. A lot of souls were working that day."