THANK YOU

The Long Beach Lodge Resort will be the venue for the wedding and many of the scheduled events. It is a 4 star relaxed and comfortable place that feels like 5 stars, with a massive great room restaurant as the centrepiece. 

Downstairs we had the dinner and reception in the Rain Forest room and we had the ceremony on the Sandbar Patio in front of the lodge. 

We also rented 6 of the 30 cabins on the private grounds stretching back towards the main road, each with a public hot tub and two bedrooms. There is also a Surf Shack (which my son described as "very chill") and a car park with two destination EV chargers. On the other side of the lodge is the beach and the open ocean... 

Paul is a genuinely nice guy, even if he is English (there are exceptions, clearly). 

Paul put us at ease during our engagement photos, despite gale-force winds that made medusa snakes of Ruth's carefully put together coiffure. The sand flying off the beach actually sand-blasted our legs and yet Paul still managed to grab some truly  memorable shots. The engagement photos in the Engagement Page Photo Gallery are all his. I am sure you will agree - just lovely. 

We are humbly and eternally grateful for Paul's skill, knowledge and humble demeanor, and have engaged him for the wedding. Check out his website - it is truly spell-binding. 

We engaged On The Beach Motion Pictures to be our videographer. Mark McKeough and his assistant Mike Danduran are masters of the moving image and his back catalogue is truly stunning. 

Watch for the element of the wild and natural to come through, as they truly capture the atmosphere, as well as the subject, in their excellent and thoroughly exciting work. 

IMPORTANT: WATCH FOR MARK AND MIKE'S FULL VIDEO OF THE WHOLE DAY, ENCOMPASSING THE WILDNESS OF LONG BEACH, OUR CEREMONY AND, POSSIBLY, THE WHALES THAT CAME TO DANCE WITH US. EXPECTED Q4 2021, 

We consider ourselves very fortunate to have Mark and his team on board. 

Steve and Jessyca operate Ouest out of a sea-can container in Tofino. Their French desserts and cakes are beyond belief and are frankly world-class, and we consider ourselves very very fortunate to have found this pure gem of a bakery. They are now a permanent fixture on our itinerary every time we visit Tofino. 

We have asked them to provide us with the   gâteau de mariage and I guarantee - you will be absolutely stunned at the result, from both taste and visual perspectives. 

Crab Apple Floral. We met Norma on a drookit grey day in June 2020 at home in her workshop. She was hard at work preparing a floral circlet for another wedding but still found time to share some conversation with us. There was an instant rapport and we felt completely at home with her suggestions and advice, and she seemed to "get" our theme and special requests straight away. 

For the wedding day she produced bouquets, a gorgeous driftwood circle back piece and elegant flowers in abundance. We could not have been happier with the result. As one guest said, the bouquet, Ruth is soooo you. "Casual elegance with bursts of wildly explosive - but still blended - colour". If anyone knows Ruth well, those "bursts" of explosive colour are totally in keeping with her character. 

Norma: you nailed it. Completely. 

Her workshop is in the forest; drop by and take a look. Absolutely delightful. 

We contacted several potential pipers for the wedding, but Joe's attitude won hands down. His piping skills and accreditation's stood on their own merits and we knew instantly we had found a winner with Joe. With Joe came Mike Sanyshyn, the drummer. 

Surprise! In addition to being a skilled piper, Joe also plays the accordion and the recorder beautifully - and he sings! And Mike is a stellar, nay, an absolute virtuoso on the mandolin AND on the fiddle! Hence Piper + and Drummer +! So much more than we asked for. 

Both of them provided the highlight of the wedding, after the ceremony itself, by playing for us on the beach in the late evening, with a selection of songs ranging from sea shanties to country, and from the Beatles to Scottish and Irish folk. True maestros, both of them. We could not have been more blessed. 

Ask Mike about Bluegrass - he has signed a contract to record bluegrass songs with a major record company.

Cedar and Rose provided exemplary services for Hair and Makeup and Rhonda Graham turned Ruth from a casual beauty into a Hollywood goddess for the wedding ceremony.

We are incredibly indebted to you, Rhonda, and thank you from the bottom of our hearts.  

You are a true artiste!

Terry at Tartantown in Coquitlam B.C. provided us with most of the kilts that will be in evidence at the wedding. Terry and Tartantown are not just kilt-makers extraordinaire, they excel in the art of finding what works, and in guiding customers to what they really want. They also excel in the lost art of customer service, with banter, good humour and close - but not fussy - attention to detail. All kilt materials come from Scotland, though they can also provide excellent alterations on site.

WEEL DONE Terry and your crew. 

We tried hard, very hard, to engage a First Nations speaker for our wedding. Unfortunately the legacy of white man's diseases and the potential for calamity in First Nations homes due to COVID-19 seems to have proven too great a barrier to overcome. We are sorry. 

We would have liked to have provided our guests with a more accurate perspective on the First Nations culture and history than is portrayed in the mass media. As it was, we offered a one minute silence for the Residential School victims as part of our ceremony. Please accept our significant apologies we could not do more.