Jenna + Chris
Worldwide
Wedding Tour
For Jenna
For our first anniversary
May 18, 2026
Late 2023 through summer 2024
We met in late 2023 at a festival up in the BC mountains.
When we started seeing each other, we could tell immediately there was something unique between us. This had the potential to go the distance.
Over the next year we vacationed in Mexico together, attended a festival in Texas for the solar eclipse, flew to England to spend time with Jenna's family, and headed out to Connecticut to spend time with Chris's. Somewhere between airports, ski lifts, festivals, road trips, and a lot of long conversations, this thing turned into something way bigger than either of us expected.
The trips piled up. UK with Jenna's family. New York with Chris's.
In August 2024 we drove down to Burning Man together. Jenna's first time on the playa. After a magical and, by Burning Man standards, surprisingly smooth week, the best of Chris's nine Burning Mans by far, we headed home. The exodus was quick and easy for once. Somewhere in the Nevada desert, driving back in our RV, we decided we would get married. Not a romantic proposal under the stars. A conversation in a dusty camper cruising at fifty miles an hour, and somehow it felt exactly right.
When we started planning, gathering everyone in one place didn't feel right. Our friends and family are scattered across different countries and different chapters of our lives. So instead of bringing the people to the party, we decided to bring the party to the people.
Our friends and family started calling it the tour. By Connecticut, they had the shirts. By England, a second set.
On the playa, August 2024. The trip we drove home from deciding to get married.
On the playa, August 2024. The trip we drove home from deciding to get married.
We started in Vancouver. It's the city we call home and the community that brought us together, so it felt right to kick everything off here. This one was for our chosen family.
Neither of us wanted the conventional white dress or black tuxedo, so we went vibrant and custom. Jenna's dress was made by Chrissy Wai-Ching at Wai Ching Studio in Seattle. Chris's suit was made by Zahir Rajani at The Sartorial Shop in Vancouver.
The plan
The plan was, relatively, simple on paper. Get legally married on Friday by taking a helicopter up to the Tantalus Ridge above Squamish with our closest friends. Saturday: an outdoor garden party at the Treehouse, our friend Kryshan's incredible home, followed by a party into the night.
Vancouver's bipolar spring weather had other ideas. Torrential rain pushed the helicopter to Sunday and forced the garden party indoors. Since we technically weren't married yet, Saturday inadvertently turned into one giant bachelor and bachelorette party.
The Treehouse, transformed
The reception area set for dinner and speeches. The stairway down to the dance floor, framed by the tree arch Dune had built for us.
With the help of an army of creative and resourceful friends, the Treehouse was transformed. Handmade decorations, candles, draping, flowers, our friend Pux playing acoustic guitar, cocktails, an incredible tree arch sculpture from Dune, food from Kara, and a beautiful cake from Kat.
Most of the guests were our mutual friends from BC. Others came from different chapters of our lives, some flying in from across the world to be there.
Pux on guitar
Pux played a beautiful acoustic set. The room slowly settled in, taking in the realization that we were actually getting married, before quieting down for the speeches.
The dance floor filling in after Pux's set.
The speeches
Speeches from Chris, Efe, Alex, and Gary that managed to be heartfelt and funny in the same breath.
The room shifted between laughter and tears, depending on whose turn it was at the microphone. Old stories came out. A few embarrassing ones. The kind that only your closest friends will tell on you in front of a packed room of one hundred and sixty people.
After the last speech wound down, the room exhaled. People left their seats, found each other in the corners, hugged the speakers, refilled glasses.
The food, the cake
Kara cooked for the entire room. Bowls of delicious food down the long table, family-style platters of roasted vegetables and skewers. A wonderful meal to provide energy for the ensuing evening.
Kat had been working on the cake for days. Layered, fresh flowers pressed into the buttercream, standing tall on the kitchen island when we walked in. She made it colourful to match the spring theme of the party.
The forced move indoors actually gave the evening an intimacy that the planned garden party never would have had.
Our friend Alyssa graciously volunteered to be our wedding planner and worked tirelessly to make the whole event come together. Kryshan opened his home and basically lived in event-host mode for days. Without those two, none of it would have happened.
Then it shifted.
Roeland, Berkan, and Karim, our bartenders for the night, hoisted Jenna into the air over the signature cocktail station. The kind of unscripted moment that defined the evening.
Dinner and toasts ended. The intimate gathering turned into a full Burner Wedding Reception. The evening guests started arriving. Welcome pictures in front of a flower-laden heart were taken. The DJs started spinning, art installations lit up, packed dance floors, and a beautifully controlled amount of chaos. Our friend Carly had worked hard to design the lighting so each room had its own unique flavor.
The lounge spaces upstairs filled with friends sinking into couches, swapping stories, kicking off their shoes. Down the hall, Harry's makeshift Elvis chapel was already drawing a queue of guests waiting to be married off.
Elvis at the Wedding Chapel
Harry showed up as Elvis and started performing spontaneous shotgun weddings for our guests, marrying off half the dance floor by the end of the night.
Late in the night, the dance floor at full tilt.
Hands forming hearts everywhere we turned. A house full of love and energy.
The DJ booth, the announcement
By peak hour, more than one hundred and sixty people were packed into the Treehouse.
The call from Squamish
Earlier in the evening, just as the party was kicking off, we got a call from the helicopter company. A weather window was opening up the following day, and we needed to be in Squamish by morning if we wanted to fly to the Tantalus Ridge.
We knew it would be a challenge after a big night, but we were excited to make our plan happen.
Around six in the morning we slipped out to get a couple of hours of sleep while the party kept going downstairs. The last guests rolled out around seven-thirty.
After almost no sleep, we threw a few things in the car and pointed it north to Squamish.
Nate went to bed earlier than the rest of us, which meant he graciously offered to drive Alex, Efe, Jenna, and Chris up the Sea-to-Sky in the morning. The weather was still threatening, but there were hints of sunshine breaking through along the highway. Just enough to keep the hope alive.
The original ten o'clock flight was pushed back. Then pushed back again. We sat in our jackets, checking the sky every twenty minutes. At one point the pilot warned us we might have to settle for a short flight along the Squamish River instead of the full ascent to Tantalus Ridge.
We decided to officially get married while we waited for the weather window. Antje, our legal officiant, met us at a wide bend next to the Squamish river, set against a beautiful backdrop of the mountains.
While we waited on a final call, Antje performed a short, simple but sweet ceremony, and we legally tied the knot.
The moment we were legally married. On a wide bend in the river, in front of our closest friends.
Our small team after the river ceremony. Alex, Efe, Nate, Antje, and us. Thrilled, slightly surprised this had just happened.
We got a bite to eat at Backcountry Brewery to wait it out. Officially married now, but still hoping the clouds would clear enough to let us pull off the original plan.
A few hours later, the call came in. Weather had cleared just enough to fly. By four in the afternoon, we gathered at the helipad. Helmets, headsets, layers, smiles. A long morning of waiting had finally turned into a go. Our pilot from No Limits Helicopters turned out to have camped at a Burning Man camp near ours on the playa. Small world. Soon we were airborne, climbing through breaking clouds with Mount Tantalus ahead and the valley dropping away below. Within minutes everything in sight was glaciers, alpine ridges, and pure wilderness.
Lifting off from the helipad toward Tantalus Ridge.
The helicopter banked hard out of the valley and the entire window filled with mountains. Snowfields, glacier ice, ridges. Breathtaking and unreal.
Efe, Alex, and Nate took turns officiating and giving speeches.
Jenna and Chris exchange their vows
Deeply emotional, full of love and connection. We recited the vows we had personally written to each other, which we had saved hoping we would be able to make the plan happen. This was a moment we would remember for the rest of our lives. The five of us in the middle of a glacier, with nothing else for miles.
Chris sabraged a bottle of champagne we had brought to toast in celebration.
The sabrage.
The Rings
We had designed our wedding bands with our friend Vlad. He had etched the Tantalus mountain range onto them, planning for this moment. We were overjoyed we could actually make it happen.
Above the clouds, on a mountain we'd nearly given up on reaching that morning.
The post-party clean-up took a tremendous effort from all of our friends. The Treehouse had to be returned to a home. Candles, draping, flowers, lighting rigs, the whole reception kit. We were so grateful for our friends who showed up and volunteered their time after a long night.
In the days after, we were just beginning to process everything that had happened. Two ceremonies, one helicopter, a hundred and sixty people, everything coming together against all odds. The magical weekend that had somehow happened. We thought the year was about to slow down.
Less than a week later, we found out. Jenna was pregnant. We could not have scripted this better.
We would wait another couple of months before we said anything publicly. That happened to coincide with the next event, in Lakeville, Connecticut, where Chris grew up.
Immediate family in the tour shirts Justin made.
A few months later, we brought the celebration to Lakeville, Connecticut, for Chris's family and the people who shaped him growing up. The weekend was built around the town Chris grew up in, and the events were held at the Salisbury School campus. Chris had gone to school there, played on those fields, eaten in that dining hall, sat through chapel for years. Bringing everyone back felt strange and good.
Justin had designed the shirts like the bootleg Grateful Dead shirts he and Chris used to print and sell on lot: same typeface, same layout, with the tour dates and city names on the back.
Everyone wore them at some point during the weekend.
Since the event was far from Vancouver, Chris's family came together to make this happen.
Chris's mom Jude basically ran point on the whole weekend. Amity handled the flowers, pulling stems and greenery from around the property all week. Rob built the welcome sign by hand, cut and painted with our names and the date, and set it at the foot of the driveway the morning the first guests arrived.
Pizza by the Lake
Friday night kicked off with a casual welcome dinner at the Salisbury School Boathouse on Twin Lakes, just across from the campus where Chris grew up.
This was the same spot where Chris's brother Erik had been married eighteen years earlier. A bit of nostalgia for the family. Full circle.
The boathouse opened wide onto the lake. Old wooden beams overhead, string lights threaded between the rafters, the dock just outside the back doors.
Friends and family rolling in from across the US. The pizza truck from New Haven had pulled around back, and the first guests were already arriving with kids in tow.
A welcome to people who had traveled a long way to be there. The sun set over the water and the lights came on along the docks.
Drinks, music, kids running around the docks. Conversations stretched late around the firepit. The kind of August night that justified the whole drive out.
The Underground House sits at the edge of the property, half-buried into the hillside, glass on the front, the rest tucked into the earth. Breakfast on the patio Saturday morning before the main event.
The room filled up steadily through the morning. Generations side by side on the couches, kids weaving between adults' legs, coffee always on.
The main event was at Belin Lodge the next afternoon. Chris's parents Rob and Jude, his brothers Erik and Justin, sisters-in-law, nieces, nephews, cousins, aunts, uncles, and old friends came in from across the US and beyond.
More of the family rolling in. Erik and his kids, Justin and his, a dozen cousins, and the aunts and uncles from the Hansen clan, who came in from across the eastern seaboard.
Kevin, Chris's best friend from high school and the weekend's unofficial photographer, briefly on the other side of the lens.
A few of the people Chris had known the longest. Childhood friends, classmates, neighbors from down the road. Some of them had met Jenna at Christmas, others were meeting her now for the first time.
Out on the lawn, kids running between adults, drinks circulating, the band warming up.
Rob and Jude celebrating their last son finally getting married. Cousin Alex with Aunt Ginger.
A band played the lodge that afternoon, working through old hard rock classics. Everyone ended up on the dance floor at some point.
Dom Pérignon
Rob had been saving a bottle of 1995 Dom Pérignon for when Chris would finally get married. After three decades, he had basically given up. By the time the cork came out, the wine had aged past its maturity, which we all had a good laugh about.
Made for a great toast anyway.
The toast Rob had been waiting decades to give.
This was also where we told everyone Jenna was pregnant. Chris worked it into his speech somewhere near the end, around when he was already running long. Welcoming Jenna into the family, with one more on the way. The room got quiet for half a second. Then it erupted in celebration. Hugs, tears, glasses raised twice.
The cake came out late in the evening, after most of the speeches and well into the dancing. Turquoise, with figurines our friends had made by hand on top.
The band leaned into the seventies. Old hard rock classics. The lodge floor cleared and filled within the first song.
The lodge dance floor, late.
The party kept going deep into the evening. Cousins and uncles on the dance floor, kids asleep on couches, drinks moving in every direction.
Cousin Anna belting out Bobbie McGee.
Last group shot of the night, around the fire pit, after the band had packed up and the cake plates were stacked. Someone decided it was a good idea to shotgun a beer.
Our third celebration was for Jenna's side: her family and closest friends gathered together in the English countryside outside London.
Before the celebration kicked off, we spent a few days in Windsor with our mothers, Jude and Nina, staying at a cottage on Oxford Road. After the pace of the previous months it felt slow and grounded. We walked everywhere, hit the castle, ate long meals, drank in the old high street pubs.
The original venue fell through right before the event, which turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Jenna's family stepped in to save the day. Her uncle Michael graciously opened up his home and beautiful garden and worked hard to help set up the event. Her aunt Tina and Nick helped Michael put together a massive marquee and organize all the catering. Her cousin Jess, along with her husband Alex, created beautiful arrangements on the tables.
The week leading up to the event was wet and rainy. On the day itself, the sun broke through the gray clouds. Around forty guests arrived, welcomed in the garden with prosecco and elderflower.
Dilip's photo shoot
Dilip moved quietly through the garden with his camera, capturing all the magical moments. He shot all day from the edges of the party.
Steph, the music
Steph played two sets through the afternoon. Quiet, unhurried acoustic during dinner, then more lifted material once the speeches were done.
The afternoon stretched into hours of speeches, wine, and tea. Long English afternoon energy. Nobody hurried.
Jenna leaning into the cake with the knife. The marquee behind, the guests packed around the table.
The whole group cheering the cake. Friends had presented the second tour t-shirt, this time using Taylor Swift's Eras Tour as inspiration.
The moment the cake was eaten and the music stopped, it began to pour. The party closed down on cue. We had a flight to catch in the morning to start the honeymoon in Italy.
The Tour Shirts
They called it The Wedding Eras Tour. Canada, USA, UK, Italy.
We booked business class on British Airways for the honeymoon. We got on the plane and discovered that BA's business class on this route was economy seats with a curtain down the middle, so we couldn't even sit next to each other. We made the best of it and toasted to the start of the honeymoon from opposite sides of the cabin.
Still tired from the UK garden party, but already on a high, we landed in Venice the next morning to begin the honeymoon.
We took a private water taxi from the airport into the lagoon, watching the skyline of domes and bell towers come into focus across the green water.
Our first day was for walking. We wound through the narrow alleys, paused at small piazzas, and let the slower pace catch up with us.
One of the small bridges over the side canals. The kind of view you walk past a hundred times in Venice without registering, then suddenly stop for.
We stayed at a beautiful Airbnb right on a canal, very centrally located. Out the window: gondolas, water traffic, morning light catching the buildings across the way.
The Piazza San Marco and the San Marco Basilica, then the Doge's Palace.
Inside the Basilica di San Marco. Gold mosaic ceilings. The whole interior glows even on a cloudy day.
The gold mosaics of San Marco, lit dimly from above. Every surface decorated. Hard to take in all at once.
The Peggy Guggenheim
We spent an afternoon at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, right on the canal. Fantastic art tucked into a small palazzo, with sculptures out on the terrace facing the water.
San Giorgio Maggiore
We didn't get to step inside San Giorgio Maggiore on this trip, but we boated past it. Palladio's white marble church on a small island across from San Marco.
Wandering through the rest of the city. Bridges, side canals, masks in shop windows, espresso standing up at the bar.
Threading the canals.
The Gritti Palace
Drinks at the Gritti Palace, Hemingway's old Venice haunt. The marble was original, the waiters moved like they'd been there forty years, and the Film Festival was just beginning to spill its glamour through the room.
Dinner at La Zucca, an outstanding Italian vegetarian meal in a tiny dining room off a side canal. The kind of place you have to know about.
Sunset, at the start of the trip. Already we were amazed by this magical place and vowed to come back.
From Venice we drove west to Sirmione, at the south end of Lake Garda, and stayed at Hotel Flaminia at the base of the Castello Scaligero di Sirmione. After being around water in Venice but not in it, the Lake District was a relief. We finally got to swim in the pristine lake.
Dinner on the lakefront in Sirmione, the castle lit up across the water. Handmade pasta covered in local truffle, a glass of Amarone della Valpolicella, the kind of dinner you remember years later.
Climbing the castle towers, swimming on the beaches, eating slowly.
Walking the medieval streets of Sirmione. Stone walls, narrow lanes, gelato stops, lake views breaking through at every corner.
We drove on to Verona, this classic city we'd all heard about so many times. Instead of queueing for Juliet's balcony, we headed north into the Valpolicella hills for an afternoon of wine at Signorvino.
An afternoon in the Valpolicella hills, in a cellar dug into the slope. Wines, fine cheeses, and a long view back down the valley.
Worth every cliché.
In the evening, we took our seats inside the Arena di Verona, the ancient Roman amphitheater in the center of the city, to watch the opera Carmen. The stage built into ancient walls, seats on stone, sky overhead. Our first opera ever, and probably the most magical Italian setting we could have imagined. Two thousand years of stone, opera, the Italian sky. It hit all at once.
Jenna walking the cobblestone street to Osteria Francescana. The signage is restrained. Easy to walk past if you don't know what you're looking for.
We arrived in Modena and went straight to Osteria Francescana. Three Michelin stars. We worked through the tasting menu slowly , savouring every bite.
World-famous chef Massimo Bottura came out to talk to us at the end of the meal. He was excited that we had chosen to bring our baby, still in Jenna's tummy, to enjoy his food. An unexpected treat.
The dining room at Osteria Francescana. Quiet, warm, dressed-down for a three-star.
Each course at Osteria Francescana arrived with its own short story from the server. The tasting menu ran almost three hours and we kept wanting it to continue.
The tasting menu moved through about a dozen courses. We laughed quietly at how good the food was.
After lunch we headed to Massimo's villa, Casa Maria Luigia, for a private balsamic vinegar tasting. We came away with a real sense of how deep balsamic goes. Different woods, different ages, the slow concentration over decades. We never thought we'd buy a hundred-euro balsamic vinegar, and we're very glad we did. It's delicious.
From the villa we drove to Agriturismo La Vedetta in the hills outside town for two nights. La Vedetta is itself a working balsamic winery, which makes sense for the region. Modena is the epicenter of balsamic in the world, and between Massimo's tasting and the days at the agriturismo, we got a proper immersion.
Among the olive trees at La Vedetta. Olive trees, vineyards, and the balsamic cellars all on the same property. We enjoyed another private vinegar tasting.
The olive grove behind the agriturismo, late afternoon.
We swam in the pool, walked the vineyards, and took a pasta-making class with the family that turned out to be one of the highlights of the trip.
Eating the tortelloni we had folded that morning. The family ate with us at the long kitchen table.
Modena is also Ferrari country. We went to the epicenter. We tried to talk our way into a test drive, then opted to avoid the unnecessary speeding tickets, which we somehow still managed to get later in our VW Polo.
The Ferrari Museum in Maranello. Decades of road cars, race cars, and prototypes under one roof.
Back at the agriturismo for the harvest. The family had us crushing grapes by hand in the old wooden press, the first step in the balsamic-making process.
A candlelit dinner under the olive trees rounded out the night. Our last in Modena.
A stop in Bologna for the food, often called the capital of Italian cuisine. Chris ate a traditional Bolognese, vegetarian of course. Jenna had the real thing. The two towers in the city center, leaning against each other.
Florence was a place Chris had spent a semester in twenty-two years earlier, and this was his first time back. It was great to be able to welcome Jenna into a city that is essentially an open-air museum. We stayed close to where Chris had lived, right by Piazza della Signoria, where Michelangelo's David was originally located.
The view from above, with the Duomo rising over the terracotta rooftops.
We spent a day at the Palazzo Vecchio and climbing the Campanile. A walking tour through the streets.
In front of the David. The original lives at the Accademia now, but the copy stands where it always stood, in the Piazza della Signoria, right where Chris had lived twenty-two years earlier.
Crossing the Ponte Vecchio in late light.
The next day we rented e-bikes and rode down through the city, across the Arno, and up into the Tuscan hills for a tasting at Lanciola.
Lunch at the winery in the Tuscan hills. Long table, local salumi, big glasses of Chianti, a perfect taste of Tuscany.
Riding back from the Tuscan hills.
The e-bikes earned their keep.
From the hills above Florence, looking back across the city to the Duomo.
A fantastic ending to the first part of our Italian leg. We had seen, tasted, and experienced so much in such a short period of time.
A long dinner at Ora d’Aria, the Michelin spot tucked off Piazza della Signoria. The right note to close Florence on.
From Florence we flew to Catania, where the rest of the friends were starting to congregate for our buddymoon. This had originally been planned as our one celebration, but as the year unfolded it ended up being the closing celebration of the wedding tour.
Catania felt like the Sicily of movies and reputation. Very different from the polished tourist circuit of northern Italy. Raw, hot, full of energy and authenticity. Vespas everywhere, espresso bars on every corner, fish markets shouting in the morning.
Dinner at Mì Cumpari Turiddu, which roughly translates to friends closer than family. A fitting name for the restaurant where the buddymoon started. Drinks after, in town, where we bumped into the first of the wedding party arriving.
The next day the guests checked into the four villas we had booked in Plemmirio, just outside Syracuse. Originally we had plans further south in one large villa that fell through. In a way it worked out better to have multiple options. Different groups settled into different places, with everyone coming together for the various activities, starting with the welcome dinner.
The main villa overlooked the water. The others were spread along the coast within walking distance of each other.
The welcome dinner took place at the beach club Varco23. We had one long table outside, with food presented family style down the middle. After dinner, we moved to the dance floor where Paul DJed a great set. It was a great way to welcome the group to Sicily and make introductions over wine and limoncellos.
Welcome dinner at Varco23, Paul on the decks.
Friends rolling in from eight countries. Some who hadn't seen each other in years, others meeting for the first time.
The party continued back at the villas.
The next day was the wine tour at Cantine Pupillo, a castle winery in the hills above Syracuse. Everyone got the full experience of Sicily through wine and food, all curated for us, even though many were worse for wear after the previous night.
The main tasting of the afternoon. Sicilian reds and whites, each with a plate of local cheese to match.
Lunch after. Long table, big plates, more wine. An authentic Sicilian afternoon meal that ran for hours.
The cellar where it all ages. Then everyone headed back to the villas to relax before the night.
That evening we met on the island of Ortigia, at the heart of ancient Syracuse. We reserved several long tables at the trendy Zefiro Solarium, right on the water. Everyone showed up looking beautiful and settled into the rhythm of the trip.
Dinner at Zefiro Solarium on Ortigia, long tables right on the water. The restaurant was set against the lights of the historic old town.
Speeches between courses from people who knew us at every stage. High school, college, Vancouver, the years in between.
More wine than was strictly necessary.
Thirty-two people from eight countries, half of them just meeting for the first time. It was heartwarming to witness new connections being made.
After dinner, we went out on the town. Groups peeled off to different bars across the old city. Others made their way back to the villas.
The next day was the crown jewel of the trip. A 75-foot yacht, the Maeva Star, launched from Ortigia and took us around the Plemmirio marine reserve. Beautiful emerald green waters, sea caves, sea cliffs. Supposedly the mythical location in Homer's Odyssey where the Sirens tried to lure Odysseus in with their songs.
Smaller groups breaking off across the deck. Some up front in the sun, some at the rail, some near the speakers at the stern.
The two of us off the back of the boat, the water clear enough to see the rocks below. Swimming in the marine reserve, the water was a perfect temperature.
Mid-afternoon on the boat. Music pumping, half the crowd in the water, the other half passing drinks down from the upper deck.
The captain swung us in close to one of the sea cliffs for the big group shot.
More of the crew on deck. Drinks in hand, friends draped over the railings, somebody always queuing up the next song on the speakers.
Music, dancing, eating, drinking, swimming, jumping off the back of the boat. Hard to imagine a better day.
A truly special day in our lives.
Plemmirio Reserve Beach Club
For our last day, we booked out the Plemmirio Reserve Beach Club for the official ceremony of the wedding tour. A long afternoon lunch, drinks, toasts, and one last cake. After three full days together, this was the version of the wedding party that had completely melded. Former strangers, now best friends.
Lounging on the deck chairs, swimming in the sea, and dancing until the sun set.
A special mention to the members of the wedding party who made it onto the tour multiple times. Nate and Rosie W attended three of the four events, rocking their bespoke tour shirts.
We danced to the traditional Sicilian wedding song from the Godfather. Gifts were given. The party ramped up.
The Onesies
The onesies were the gift.
Halfway through the afternoon, Max and Simone disappeared. They reappeared in matching 80s ski onesies, marching down the steps to cheesy euro après music. They had prepared the dance number and ski suits as gifts for us, which we both wore, and somehow ended up swimming in the sea.
The moment the onesies appeared.
The pool party afterward at one of the villas. The afternoon kept rolling into the evening, and the evening rolled into the next morning.
Everyone was fully connected at this point. The full party went well into the next morning, capping off one of the best events of our lives.
After Sicily wrapped, the friends flew home. We drove an hour up the coast to Taormina for two quiet days at one of the nicest hotels we stayed in all honeymoon, perched above the Mediterranean with Mount Etna out the window. Taormina is the location of White Lotus Season 2, part of our inspiration for a party in Sicily. And now that we were finally in this stunning town on the cliffs, we had time to process the amazing adventure.
Mornings on the pool patio with coffee and slow, wandering afternoons.
An afternoon climb to the ancient Greek theater above town. The seats face Etna across the bay. They have been pointed at that view for thousands of years.
From the high terraces above the theater. The coast of Sicily curving south, the Ionian Sea catching the late-afternoon light.
Truffle treats, pistachio everything, gelato in narrow streets. Sampling some of the local wine, Parmigiano-style cheeses, and original Sicilian bites along the way. Wandering with no plan, ducking into shops, eating standing up at counters.
Long dinners trying to wrap our heads around the year. Vancouver, Squamish, Connecticut, England, Italy, Sicily. The last six months had been a whirlwind.
Closing out the year above the Mediterranean.
We flew back to Vancouver from Catania. After a long flight with a layover in Germany, the wedding tour was over.
The first week home was strange, but it was nice to be home. After a year of countdown lists, we had only one big thing in the calendar.
A quiet morning back home, the pace finally slowing.
Through every event of the year, Jenna had been pregnant. The garden party in Vancouver. The helicopter and the glacier. Connecticut. The garden party in the UK. Venice, Modena, Florence. The buddymoon in Sicily. Taormina.
Every flight, every dinner, every dance floor, our baby was with us the whole time.
We told a few people in Connecticut, during Chris's speech, with the Dom Pérignon. We told more in England. By Sicily, all our closest friends and family knew. We never made a formal announcement. The trip was its own announcement.
After the celebrations the pace slowed but Jenna kept moving. Hikes, dinners, weekends away with friends, the seawall in the rain. Active and healthy the whole way through. New Year's at the Nest was the last big gathering before the final stretch.
Summer Bella Winters was born on a Thursday morning in Vancouver. Eight pounds, ten ounces. A big beautiful baby.
We had picked the name Summer Winters well before the birth. The middle name came after we finally met her. Bella. An ode to our time in Italy and to the beautiful girl in front of us.
The wedding tour had a route, a guest list, a structure. This did not. We took her home from the hospital and figured it out one hour at a time.
A year earlier, we had decided to bring the party to the people instead of asking everyone to come to one. Honestly, there were moments in the lead-up where we wondered if we'd taken on too much. By the end, we had three amazing wedding celebrations and an unforgettable buddymoon. Without a shadow of a doubt, it was the best year of our lives. We can't wait to share this story with Summer, when she is old enough to ask how we got here.
Now there were three of us.
We could not have done these celebrations without the incredible help and support from family and friends. There were so many people who contributed in big and small ways. This is a short list, by event, of the key people who helped the most.
Vancouver
People
Vendors
Squamish
People
Vendors
Connecticut
People
Stays
England
People
Stays
Italy
People
Restaurants
Hotels and stays
Wine and culture
Sicily
People
Restaurants and beach clubs
Wine and boat
Stays
Everyone else
We are so grateful for everyone who volunteered their time and energy in ways big and small to make each event happen. The family members who flew in from across oceans. The friends who came to one event, or two, or four, or all of them. The ones who couldn't make it but sent the message. The chosen family.
This year happened because of all of you. Thank you.
Ti amo.
Vancouver, May 18, 2026.