Trevor and Jamie's wedding in Port Carling, Ontario

One morning in March while drinking coffee in bed and thinking about our upcoming trip to Nicaragua, the most beautiful round stone on a thin band appeared in front of my face. I quickly snapped out of my Nicaragua-day dreaming and had to rewind a minute to realize Trevor had just asked me to marry him. It was the most chill, nonchalant, Jamie & Trevor thing you could ever imagine. And I love it.

There ended up being no discussion about pushing the date because neither of us is very patient and we both have too much going on to be thinking about a wedding for a year or longer. It was hard to choose a venue not only because we were only 5 months out, but also because we wanted to customize all the details and it was really important to both of us that the wedding was as low-waste as possible. After living on the water together for several years we’ve both become hyper-aware of how much single-use crap is ending up in nature.

When my aunt and uncle Rob & Robin offered their cottage on Lake Rosseau, we realized it would be perfect! It will never have been done before, and we'd be able to make it uniquely us! Months of crazy ideas turned to reality ended up with me flying myself in (wedding dress and all) in a floatplane, and arriving in my uncle's antique wooden boat (the Shepherd).

We were staying in the cottage boathouse so our accommodations literally were the wedding venue. We called everyone on the bay to see who would be willing to rent their place out in September, and managed to get enough cottages to accommodate about 50 of our 85 guests within walking distance of the cottage. Most people came up Friday, so we had a potluck and campfire the night before. Everyone else either drove in or got accommodations within a 10-15 minute drive of the venue.

It took us a while to figure out where/how to do the ceremony at Rob & Robin's cottage but after a few family meetings, we realized the venue lent itself perfectly to the ceremony on the dock. I would arrive by boat straight into the boathouse, where our bridal party was waiting. The door to the boathouse opens right to the top of the dock, where we were easily able to set up an aisle headed to the end of the dock. Some friends and family would sit in the aisle and others would stand on the spacious boathouse balcony overlooking the dock.

We decided to do a first look before the ceremony so that Trevor and I could take photos together with the Shepherd and the airplane. My uncle brought my brother out to the plane too and then took Trevor back to land where the guests were arriving. My friends Grace and Karl (also pilots) had brought the float plane in, so my brother Drew and I hopped in and went for a ride! I sat up front and Karl let me fly a little bit as we did a few laps over the cottage. According to some guests, most people didn’t realize it was me until we buzzed the cottage for the 3rd time. Someone even was saying that it was "rather rude of those people to be buzzing a wedding like this and making all that noise”. Once we could see people taking their seats, we landed and docked at the neighbors cottage. Uncle Rob picked me up in the Shepherd and took my brother and me straight past the aisle into the boathouse.

The wedding really was a labour of love, we've been so busy adventuring together we hadn't put any forethought into a wedding (I didn't even have a Pinterest account before us getting engaged). When you combine that with the fact that we chose a complete non-venue to host our wedding, it ended up requiring way more creative thinking than we'd anticipated. But the whole family came together and everyone contributed!

Some of my favourite details:

Guests had to RSVP with a selfie which we printed and used for people to find their seats.

A good friend who works for Steamwhistle (brewed in Toronto) got us 85 cans. We put a cold can at everyone's seat and a bin of them on the boat house. After we were pronounced married we did a giant steam whistle cheers with all 85 guests! It was such a good feeling. Plus everyone had a drink in their hand going into cocktail hour so the bar didn’t get slammed!

Our “gift” was a small tumbler (in one of 4 colours), we labelled each one with the guests' name and that was their cup to use for the night.

The wine bottles were custom labelled with photos I’ve taken during our travels. Each label represented one of our favourite places.

The theme of the bar was local. All our beer came from Lake of Bays and Muskoka Brewery (within 50KM of the venue), and all our liquor was local Ontario (Dillons). The exception was Flor de Caña rum, which we got straight from the factory in Nicaragua since Trevor’s dad lives there.

Our signature cocktails were a spicy peach margarita made with an Ontario peach purée and a barrel-aged Negroni which I aged myself in an oak barrel for 3.5 weeks before the wedding!

We had a beautiful cooking trailer in the forest to serve up tacos during cocktail hour, and late-night fried chicken/jalapeño cornbread donuts.

We found a caterer to do classic Muskoka style barbecue food, served family-style on giant 8’ long pine boards.

My uncle did mini lights all over the property including under the tent.

Among many lawn games, giant Jenga was a favourite throughout the event.

My uncle, having a lot of experience with professional fireworks, did an awesome show after dinner.

We had like 20 wedding planners between all of our close friends and family who had stepped up to help and it really helped everything run with minimal hiccups. The rain even held off until dinner, when everyone was under the tent… which is when the power went out. My uncle Rob is such a resourceful man, and his years of experience in the special events industry paid off because he got 2 generators up and running in just a few minutes. We couldn’t believe it! Everyone laughed because it had happened in the middle of my dear friend John’s opening toast, but he is so loud that we’d already been making jokes about the fact that we really didn’t need to give him a microphone. Luckily with the cooking trailer being wood-fired, and the theme of dinner being BBQ-based, catering made due and the food was amazing!

Since everyone was staying so close by, we had a pretty big late-night crowd and ended the night with an impromptu campfire. The bridal party stayed up until sunrise, but Trevor and I were passed out by about 3 am. We miraculously woke up at 8 am on Sunday, and thought we’d better rally to start cleaning up so that my aunt and uncle weren’t stuck with a mess. When we got outside, there were already people cleaning up the property! By the time my aunt and uncle got up, a lot of the clean up was done and put away because so many guests had walked over to lend a hand.

I can’t even begin to tell you how much love and happiness we felt from having such an intimate cottage weekend. It’s definitely not what we originally planned, but it came together and was more than perfect. We wanted to strike a balance between a rustic, wholesome Muskoka cottage event and a classy yet adventurous wedding. I think you’ll see from the photos that the whole thing was so authentically us and very Canadian. We wouldn’t have had it any other way!