Our Story
Early days
Our story began in a computer lab, leaning over a code written, head exploding robot. We met back in 2018, when both of us were enrolled in the Graphic Design program at Algonquin College, Adam in his final year, Hannah in her first. Adam was a TA that ran a weekly web development lab where he mostly spent energy reminding students they do in fact need to watch the weekly instructional videos. He also helped students solve genuine assignment questions and on one occasion, flirted with an oblivious Hannah. After some intentional work on Adam’s part to make sure we ran into each other a few more times in the hallways, we went on our first date in early February 2019 to a board game cafe, and pretty quickly we were spending a lot of time together and exchanged the L word while back-country camping not long after.
Fast forward to March 2020 when our plans to move in together were sped up by the ~state of things~ and we moved into Adam’s parent’s house for several months before getting a place of our own later that year. We upgraded to our current apartment another year after that, and outside of a recent year long excursion there and back again, have been happily living in Hintonburg, Ottawa ever since.
Adventurous folks
We have been lucky to explore our adventurous sides together on several occasions, including trips to both the far West and far East bits of Canada, and most notably of course to Aotearoa New Zealand for a year between 2025-2026. That trip was the culmination of a lot of dreaming, hard work, support from our communities and putting ourselves out there to make things happen. We lived in the capital city Wellington and enjoyed a number of tramps around the two main islands, and truly experienced the trip of a lifetime. If anyone is still interested in hearing us talk about it (we’re sure it’s relentless, sorry) you can have a look at our photo album again. There will be many references to our time away on our wedding day (and on this site) as it was a transformative, and also just quite recent, adventure.
Getting engaged with the Super Harvest Moon
We believe that when it comes to proposals, the only surprise should be the timing. After spending so many loving years together, the answer was set, all that was left was to find the perfect opportunity for a surprise proposal. Hannah has a distinct love and admiration for the moon. With this in his pocket, Adam planned what had the appearance of just a special fun weekday evening for us — a hike up in the Gatineau hills to a cabin where we could enjoy a nice charcuterie dinner during the Super Harvest Moon that also featured a lunar eclipse. Behind the scenes Adam collected members of both our families to sneak up after us and set up a display of (battery) candles and photos of our life together at a bench lookout, which we happened upon on the way back out from our dinner. After spending the day mildly suspicious and convincing herself that nothing was going to happen since we ‘weren’t doing that right now’, Hannah declared “oh no” when she realised she had in fact been correct that the proposal was nigh.
Once Adam asked and Hannah said “of course”, he presented her with a beautiful custom moon phase engagement ring, as well as our families waiting in the parking lot (and a pre-negotiated next day off work too, to enjoy their visit). Hannah was then very pleased to pull out the ring she had been diligently carrying around in secret to present back, knowing Adam would plan something very special and romantic, and wanting to make sure he got to be surprised as well.
One of the first decisions we made in planning our wedding was the date, when we realised that the Harvest Moon this year falls on a Saturday. With that as the perfect backdrop and full circle completion of our engagement story, we are excited to have our full communities of extended family and friends to join us this time in celebrating.
