Weddings on the water, pt 1
When I first met Beth, I had put a deposit down on a big, 45’ Jeanneau sailboat to live on. I had lived in tiny Toronto condos for decades, then sailed around the world on similar sized boats, so I figured I would be more than comfortable in a roomy boat with 3 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms (ya, crazy eh?). During the summer of 2020, Beth and I traveled back and forth to Gananoque a handful of times to see the boat, help the owner with various projects, and generally get comfortable with what seemed like a strange but suitable step for me and my life – keep in mind that Beth and I were pretty new at the time.
She’s the wrong colour of blue…
On one of the road trips out east, Beth asked if we could do photoshoots on the boat. She’s a photographer and saw the potential of a unique studio on the water. I said yes, of course, hoping that a few incremental dollars would offset the costs of the boat. But that got me thinking about other ways to use the big damn thing for more than just cocktails.
Years past, I had been asked by a good friend if I would do the honour of officiating the marriage of her and her future bride. At the time, we all thought I’d just do some online course and make it happen – turns out that, in Ontario at least, it ain’t so easy to become a legal officiant. I left on a trip and they got married at City Hall (I did surprise them by showing up, but that’s another story…) and I didn’t think about the whole thing again for a long time.
Until Beth sparked the idea of the boat being a business, not just a house or hobby, and I remembered how enamored I’d been with the idea of officiating for my friend. I showed up at Beth’s place, burst in the door and said, “why don’t we do weddings on the boat?!”
She was peeing so she didn’t answer me right away, but when she came out of the bathroom, Beth said “we can do that?!?”
That was mid-summer 2020. That 45’ boat didn’t come to be, for good reasons. Time passed.
Last week, mid-summer 2024, we held our first wedding on board Black Diamond, our boat. And, lemme tell ya, it was nothing short of pure magic. Years of work came together with the perfect couple on the perfect day and, I swear to you, history was made that day. This is the beginning of something incredible, made for incredible people, born from the daydreams of us two beach bums during road trips at the end of the world.
Read more about our first on-water wedding in the next post…
