MR MICHAEL Puhaindran knew that Ms Lo Hwei Yen was the woman he wanted to marry from the moment he met her.

It was a brief encounter, along bustling Change Alley at Raffles Place, in 2006. She was doing her pupilage with law firm Drew and Napier then.

He recalled, with a chuckle, asking his friend who introduced them: 'Who's the babe?'

Thus began their eight-month courtship, which led up to a Bali wedding.

It was evident to all that Mr Puhaindran, 37, also a lawyer, is still reeling from the loss of the woman he said he had 'waited all his life to find' when he met the media on Wednesday.

Minutes before the press conference began, he appeared distracted and lost in thought. Though surrounded by friends who attempted to engage him in conversation, he barely uttered a word.

The only time he broke into a rare smile was when a friend pointed at a picture of Ms Lo on the projector screen and said something to him.

'She had a smile that captured you. When you saw her smile, you knew that this was a person who smiled with her whole being,' he said, when asked what had struck him most about his 28-year-old wife.

A second chance encounter at coffee joint Spinelli's presented him an opportunity to ask her out for lunch.

Their first date was during lunch hour at swanky Italian restaurant San Marco's, at the Fullerton Hotel.

Certain that she was the one for him, he proposed to her on holiday in the Maldives, at midnight on the very first night they spent on the island.

'I hadn't planned to do it so soon, but I guess I just couldn't wait', he said.

Like any newly-wed couple, they had the occasional tiff, but Mr Puhaindran described the last few weeks he had with her as the 'best time of my life'.

'She was truly the meaning of my life, and everything I did, I did for her', he added.

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