Words From Our Couples
Love Stories
Erica & Matt Leyden
MARRIED SEPTEMBER 25, 2021
Matt and I met on the first day of university, at a bonfire for our residence building. We both found the stories being told at the campfire hilarious and laughed out loud together. We grew as friends over the school year, with walks over campus, and a few math and physics tutoring sessions.
Bradie & Nick Haines
MARRIED SEPTEMBER 5, 2021
It was love at first sight! Nick and I met in a cafeteria at Fanshawe College, in 2013. We had been enrolled in the same program, and ended up sitting together in the cafeteria, after our professor didn’t show up for the first class. If our professor had showed up as planned, I don’t know that I would have had an excuse to sit next to the cute guy.
Samantha & Dylan Richardson
MARRIED SEPTEMBER 4, 2021
We met in 2008, at the beginning of grade nine. At the time, we shared mutual friends, but we didn’t have any classes together. When our friends introduced us, we instantly hit if off, quickly becoming high school sweethearts.
Kourtni & John Zalenko
MARRIED OCTOBER 5, 2019
We actually met on an online dating app (Tinder) in 2013. I thought John was good looking (obviously), and we ended up having a lot in common. Originally, I didn’t want to go – it was a blind date, and it would be the first time I had ever done anything like that. Thank goodness my best friend convinced me to go!
Jenn & Mike Tracy
MARRIED SEPTEMBER 14, 2019
When people ask me how I met my husband, I usually start with, “It’s a really romantic story…”, and then it quickly ends by telling them that we met and got engaged at a trailer park. Mike and I grew up together, spending each summer at a campground that both of our families camped at. High school summer love grew into more, and because we spent so much of our time at the park together, it was the perfect place for him to propose.
Amy & Blake Leontowicz
MARRIED JUNE 30, 2019
Blake and I met on Tinder, so we like to say that ours is a modern-day love story. But with or without Tinder, our paths were always meant to cross. On our first date, we realized that we only lived one street over from each other, and we couldn’t believe we never had met before! From then on, we were inseparable.
Erica & Chris Hayes
MARRIED DECEMBER 31, 2018
Chris and I met in September of 2011, at the University of Guelph, where we were in the same department completing our graduate studies. It was the first day of orientation when we saw each other for the first time. Chris was sitting behind me and ‘accidentally’ flicked his pen at me – and would you believe, he still remembers what I was wearing that day! Luckily, our interactions continued, as we would see each other around campus and at various department events. Our friendship grew stronger in January of 2012, when we began running together.
Julia & Dan Van der Werf
MARRIED OCTOBER 20, 2018
Julia and I met at the University of Guelph, in graduate school, where we were both studying Psychology. The psychology grad students at Guelph had a strange affinity for hosting themed costume parties. Naturally, it did not take long for our paths to cross at several of these parties, with things culminating during a magical Halloween evening where I was dressed as a baby and her as a black swan (more like Natalie Portman, less like the water bird in Stratford).
Shauna & Tyler Rae
MARRIED OCTOBER 5, 2018
When you grow up in a small town like St. Marys, Ontario, you know of other people even if you don’t know them personally. That was Tyler and I. Even though we weren’t friends at the time, we were still connected at a young age through Tyler playing road hockey with my brother, and since his mom was my kindergarten teacher. In our final years of high school, Tyler and I had lockers in the same hallway at DCVI. For a while, he would just catch glances at me as I walked down the halls, but then one day his friend Louie messaged me on MSN to tell me that Tyler really liked me and suggested we hang out sometime.