Before there was a single flower or a seating chart or a font choice, there were the shoes. A pair of sculptural green Prada heels, non-negotiable from the start. Bri and Cory built an entire aesthetic universe outward from that single object.The wedding took place at her parents’ home in Victoria, a property with history, texture, and opinions of its own, on a summer evening.
Fifty-five guests gathered for a day that included a champagne tower, a cigar bar and a fully tinselled disco room waiting for the second act. The images were made by Georgia Johnston, the first vendor booked before the venue was chosen and before the vision had language for itself.
Location: Victoria, BC, Canada
Style: Editorial, Intimate, Heritage
Time of planning: 1 year
Number of guests: 55
Setting: Private Family Estate
Season: Summer
Bri is an emergency medicine doctor and Cory is a police officer, and they met the way nobody plans: he brought a patient into the emergency department where she was working, and later slid into her DMs. Their first date was supposed to be a ninety-minute morning hike. It turned into eight hours of non-stop conversation, followed by a second date the same evening. They have not stopped talking since. Both had been married before, both came in with children, and from the very beginning they agreed to go into the relationship honestly and without games. They clicked immediately and describe what they have as, first and foremost, a great friendship.
When Cory proposed, he took Bri on a private helicopter ride to a glacier, having already asked her children for their permission. They had not originally thought they needed marriage, but it did not take long before making things official, to each other, to their children, and to the world, stopped feeling optional. They called it a ceremony of souls. Between them they have five kids, and the wedding was designed to reflect that: a genuine celebration of a family that had chosen itself.
Bride's Morning & Fashion
Bri planned the wedding herself, which tracks given that during her Emergency Medicine residency, on mat leave, she had already started a wedding stationery company as a creative outlet. That same instinct ran through every fashion decision she made. The ceremony dress is Katie May Collection, altered by a local seamstress into a column silhouette with a high slit.
The earrings, from Canadian jeweller Olive & Piper, were chosen because they reminded Bri of a pieris bush that grows wild in their garden. She wanted pieris in her bouquet but it was out of season, so she found it in the jewellery instead.
The veil was handmade in Ukraine, where her mother is from, and so was the headpiece, both preserved now with the intention that her daughters might wear them someday. The bridesmaids’ dresses, worn by Bri’s two daughters, were hand-sewn by Bri’s mother. The perfume was Le Labo Rose 31, adopted as a signature scent when she was first pregnant and chosen for its neurological link to memory and the limbic system!
"I went to bridal stores and couldn't swallow splurging on a gown I knew I'd only wear once, so I got the shoes I knew I'd wear again and ordered the dress from Revolve sitting in my mom's car on the way home."
Groom’s Fashion
The groom wore a custom tux from Indochino, a label local to Victoria and founded by former University of Victoria students. His wedding ring was a family crest, the same crest Bri’s parents had given him when Cory proposed, which he wore as an engagement ring for two and a half years before the wedding. His socks came from OutWay, a local company Bri had encountered through her volunteer work with the Victoria Hospitals Foundation.
Ceremony
The ceremony took place outdoors in her parents’ backyard. Palma of Zingaro Floral Perfumery, a longtime friend who had also developed signature scents for Bri’s medical spa, translated that feeling into climbing roses framing doorways and vines wrapped around stone as if undisturbed for centuries. The florals felt like they belonged to the architecture of the home rather than something installed for the occasion, which was entirely the point.
What Bri didn’t know until the day itself was that Palma had collected wild birds’ nests and hidden them throughout the installation, one for each child in their blended family of five. The nests were invisible unless you looked for them, and that is the detail that belongs in a museum.
"I wanted the florals to feel like an old European estate garden that had been left to grow freely for a hundred years. Romantic, organic, overgrown, and slightly wild. A nod to heritage, to the fact that our marriage felt like a reunion of our souls in another lifetime."
Their children walked them down the aisle. Their older son played guitar. They were married by Wade, who had married Bri’s sister the summer before, making his presence a continuation of shared history rather than simply an officiant doing his job. The ceremony ended with a passage from Brambly Hedge, a children’s book they had read to their kids when they were small, and then Purple Disco Machine’s Hypnotize came on and the party began. The tonal range from a storybook to a DJ drop is not a contradiction but a personality, and in this case it was entirely on purpose.
Moments Together
The photographer captured the two of them throughout the day with the same quality that defines the best portrait work without performing for the camera. Georgia Johnston made the choice to give color to the detail shots and black and white to the emotional ones.
"We didn't originally think we needed marriage, but it wasn't long into being together that we realized that making our relationship official, to each other, to our children, to the world, was not just a party. It was a ceremony of souls."
The cocktail hour unfolded outdoors under warm tungsten string lights, which is a detail worth specifying because the difference between warm tungsten and cold LED fairy lights is roughly 1000 Kelvin and approximately ten years of Pinterest fatigue. Andrew from Twist of Fate curated the bar program, leaning into British Columbia wines and cocktails that were creative without being fussy.
Reception
The reception tables were stripped back to raw linen and candlelight with no centerpieces and no florals, because the design logic of this wedding treated restraint as a decision. Dinner was family-style by Beaumont Kitchen, with full creative control handed over to the team. Local produce, BC wines, olive oil that tasted like sunlight according to the couple, all served with the generosity of a meal meant to be passed and lingered over.
"We wanted our guests to feel cared for, considered, and genuinely delighted. The goal was not just to host a beautiful wedding, but to curate an experience that felt personal and shared. The love felt expansive because it really was an opportunity to celebrate our whole community."
Neither of them is much for traditional cake, but both love chocolate mousse, and Paris is one of their favourite cities. So instead of a cake cutting, guests were handed paper cones filled with rich chocolate mousse to enjoy while sipping cocktails after dinner, which was playful and unexpected and completely in character for two people who have never once done the obvious thing.
As the evening settled in, a cigar bar materialized under the stars, cut with a railroad spike tool that had belonged to Bri’s grandfather, a Danish immigrant who worked on the Canadian Railways when he first arrived in Canada. Custom matchbooks went home with guests as souvenirs.
Later, the couple disappeared and came back in different clothes, and the living room that had been unremarkable all evening was revealed as a full disco room with lasers, smoke machines, and tinsel on every surface, floor-to-ceiling multicolour metallic fringe that turned a family home in Victoria.
The reveal song was Angel of My Dreams by Jade, and Music Made of Memories built the energy from there until no one was wearing shoes. For the evening Bri had changed into a Zara mini dress and Dior heels, having saved enough on the ceremony dress to justify them, finishing the look with High Heel Jungle tights that were doing exactly as much work as everything else she wore that day.
Advice from the couple:
• Listen to your heart and do it your way, whether that means honoring tradition or breaking the mold entirely. Create a day that reflects who you are, not what you think is expected.
• And remember to celebrate your guests too. A wedding is a rare and beautiful opportunity for everyone in the room to reflect on love, connection, and community. Let it be shared.
PHOTOGRAPHER Georgia Johnston Photography | VIDEOGRAPHER Kyee Creative | PLANNING & STATIONERY Bri Bentzon | FLORALS Zingaro Floral Perfumery | HAIR Taylor Bartel | MAKEUP Marianne Moore Makeup | DRESS Katie May Collection | SHOES Prada | EVENING DRESS Zara | EVENING SHOES Dior | EARRINGS Olive & Piper | TIGHTS High Heel Jungle | GROOM’S SUIT Indochino | CATERING Beaumont Kitchen | BAR Twist of Fate | MUSIC Music Made of Memories
