This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Victor Sine and Julianne Payne had barely made it through the doors at the Salt Palace last Thursday when they first saw why Salt Lake Comic Con's FanXperience would be a strange one for the soon-to-be-married couple.

"Five feet after we [entered], we were stopped every 5 minutes," said Sine (pronounced "sih-NAY"), 25, of Salt Lake City. "People were gushing."

The reason Sine and Payne, 22, were stopped so often is that practically everyone who saw them at FanX wanted to get a picture of them in their cosplay: as Finn and Rey, the main characters from "Star Wars: The Force Awakens."

The couple, along with Payne's 11-month-old daughter, Addie — referred to as "Baby-8," for her costume as the 'droid BB-8 — became the unwitting stars of FanX. And, thanks to social media, their spot-on cosplay has landed them a small, odd taste of international fame.

The story began last August, when Sine and Payne met, via the dating app Tinder, when Addie was about 3 months old.

Though both were transplants from Orange County, Calif., Sine and Payne didn't meet until they had lived in Utah. He works for the University of Southern California as a clinical research assistant looking at Alzheimer's research. She lives in Midway and works as a part-time nanny in Park City.

Sine was introduced to the "Star Wars" universe when the prequels came out, while Payne acknowledged that "I had never seen any of them my entire life" before meeting him.

"She knew I was nerdy and I cosplayed and I'd been to Comic Cons," Sine said in a joint phone interview this week.

So, early in their relationship, they decided to watch a marathon of all six "Star Wars" movies within a week.

"I said, 'Holy crap! What had we been missing?' " Sine said.

He added, " 'Star Wars' was probably the bonding factor in our relationship, so we became pretty committed to it."

Even before seeing the trailer for "Star Wars: The Force Awakens," and only knowing about the early casting, the pair decided they would cosplay as Finn and Rey.

"I didn't even know that Finn was black and British," said Sine, who — like John Boyega, the actor who plays Finn in the movie — is black and was born in London.

Seeing the movie, and how Finn and Rey resembled them, Payne said, "my jaw was on the floor. His opening scene, when he comes into the movie? Oh, my gosh, I lost my mind."

After seeing the movie, the couple set to work devising their costumes.

Sine couldn't find the right thrift-store jacket to modify. So he went online to buy a replica of Finn's iconic leather jacket. (Yes, nerds, it was originally Poe Dameron's jacket.)

Payne experimented with a few fabrics to copy Rey's wraparound desert wear, ultimately settling on cotton gauze. She used "all-natural dyeing" — she doesn't want to give away the secret — to get the right shade of tan on the wrap and a tunic. She found a pair of capri pants that resembled Rey's at Forever 21.

She cut and glued two leather straps for Rey's wristbands. Rey's staff is made up of components found at Home Depot: metal pipe, PVC and some conduits — all spray-painted black.

And Payne, who normally wears her hair in a bob, put in extensions to achieve Rey's triple-bun look. "It was a lot of work," she said.

For Addie, the couple bought a BB-8 outfit on eBay, but it was so tight they had to alter it.

The group cosplay got attention all over the Salt Palace. Dozens of people took photos. Artists gave them free prints and a T-shirt. The folks running a "Reptile Encounter" exhibit let them take pictures with a boa constrictor for free.

Even outside the Salt Palace, people noticed. When they got lunch at the City Creek food court, three families stopped by to get pictures with them.

After FanX, they thought things would die down. Their pictures were popular on Salt Lake Comic Con's Facebook page, but "we didn't think it would leave Comic Con-world," Payne said.

On Monday, Sine flew to Seattle for work, and because of the weather, he wore the Finn jacket. Getting off the plane at Sea-Tac, someone nodded in recognition and asked, "Wait, are you the Baby-8 guy from Comic Con?"

When the pictures hit Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, everything went nuts. By Tuesday, there were mentions of the couple, with photos, on websites such as Mashable, Hello Giggles, The Berry and Complex. Even mainstream sites, like Entertainment Weekly and NBC's "Today" show, picked up the story.

"People that I haven't talked to since freshman year in high school are messaging me," Sine said. They changed their profile names on their personal Facebook pages, for privacy's sake, and started a cosplay Facebook page to handle the traffic. Sine also created his first Twitter and Tumblr accounts.

The popularity of Sine and Payne's look can be attributed to the fact that while Payne was one of many Reys at FanX, Sine believes he was the only Finn in the Salt Palace.

"They thought it was really cool that we could get the whole package pretty accurately," Payne said.

Another reason, she said, is that "a lot of people who saw the movie are hoping, like I am, that Finn and Rey end up together. When people found out we are engaged in real life — because we got asked a lot, 'Are you a real couple?' — it was kind of like their dreams were coming true."

The other big reason is Addie's "Baby-8," which kicked up the "awww" factor by at least 12 parsecs.

"She moves like BB-8," Sine said. "She scoots on her bum to get around. She falls forward sometimes, and rolls over."

Sine also noted that his relationship with Payne and her daughter resembles that of Finn, Rey and BB-8.

"BB-8's like their baby, anyway," Sine said. "BB-8 first finds Rey, and then Finn kind of gets a relationship with BB-8. It's just like how it happened with Addie and Jules. I came in and started dating Jules, and also started getting a relationship with Addie. I've grown into this role where I'm also her caretaker. And I'm adopting her, and I'm going to be her father. … We're kind of living parallel to what happened in the movie."

Payne added, "We just don't have a Millennium Falcon, unfortunately."

The brush with fame will fade in time. In the meantime, the couple are moving ahead with their plans. They have bought their first house, in Layton, and will be throwing Addie her first birthday party next month — with, of course, a "Star Wars" theme.

They will marry in late May, in what Payne calls "a bohemian-classy wedding, because that's what I've always wanted."

There is one additional touch, she said: "The bridal party's going to have lightsabers."

Sean P. Means writes The Cricket in daily blog form at http://www.sltrib.com/blogs/moviecricket. Follow him on Twitter @moviecricket. Email him at spmeans@sltrib.com.