Real Weddings: Mike and Kate

Kate Memphis Wurstlin, a 32-year-old tattoo artist, first met Mike George, a 33-year-old tattoo artist and builder, when they were first-year fine arts students at OCAD University in 2011. Though they didn’t connect at the time, the pair met up in 2018 over their shared career path in tattooing. After a few flirty encounters, they began dating in 2019. They discovered a mutual love for DIY projects and renovations after they flipped a Scarborough house in 2020. Later, they purchased a cabin in Georgina, Ontario, where Mike proposed two years later, in a clearing in the forest. They got married in that same clearing among 100 friends and family in September of 2025. The couple made much of their wedding decor and furniture themselves. Here’s how their DIY wedding came together.

Kate: Mike and I met during our very first class at OCAD in 2011, which was life drawing.

Mike: Kate was far cooler than I was. She had colourful streaks in her hair, and I thought she looked edgy. I grew up in Brampton, so I hadn’t seen much of that before. I quickly developed a crush on her, but I don’t think she had that much interest in me.

Kate: You were a little bit shy and quiet at the time. Aside from going to a couple of gallery shows with some mutual friends, we didn’t interact much, and nothing ever happened between us at school. I ended up quitting after three years. I was unsure of my path, and while I loved my fine art courses, I was frustrated with the other degree requirements. I worked in the service industry for the first few years, then I became a tattoo artist.

Mike: I ended up specializing in sculpture and finished school in 2015. I lived near a tattoo shop in Kensington Market and got an apprenticeship there after graduating. I actually gave Kate a tattoo during my apprenticeship—a little bunny with some flowers. We chatted a lot while it was happening. Things got a little flirty too, but I knew she was in a relationship at the time.

Kate: I always thought Mike was a catch. He had a lot of artistic talent, and I thought he was cute. I actually tried to set him up with a friend in 2016. I wasn’t interested at the time because I was dating someone else.

Mike: Near the end of summer 2018, Kate messaged me and asked if we could grab coffee. She said she wanted to get some advice about the tattoo industry, but I fully assumed it was a date. Then she showed up with a notebook.

Kate: I really was just looking for career advice! We got coffee and sat on a bench in Trinity Bellwoods Park and chatted about needles and ink.

Mike: I’m 80 per cent sure it was a date. Dates come in all forms.

Kate: I was legitimately taking notes about what he was saying. And I was dating someone else at the time. But a few months later, in January, Mike messaged to say that he was going to be in my neighbourhood and asked if I wanted to go for coffee. I was in the midst of a break-up, but I knew I liked Mike. He seemed so much more confident and more himself compared with our time in school.

Mike: That one was definitely a date. We were laughing the whole time. It was a little bit of a blur because I was so excited to be chatting with her. After that, I went on a trip to Spain, and on our third date, I brought her some citrus blossom perfume because it had reminded me of her while I was away.

Kate: He was dropping some pretty cute lines. We kept hanging out for the next few months but didn’t make our relationship official until April of 2019. Things moved pretty quickly from there. We went on our first trip together that June, to New York, where we had an amazing time. We had scheduled some tattoos, and it felt like playing house, only we were playing “studio” instead, testing what it would be like to work together. When Covid hit, we were both out of work, so we joked that it was our retirement trial. We were living separately at the time but kept ourselves busy with projects. Mike used his savings to buy a house in Scarborough, which he moved into with the intention to flip and sell it. I still had an apartment in Toronto, but I was over there all the time, helping him out with renos.

Mike: Kate and I were tearing up old floors, putting up drywall, digging holes in the backyard and planting clover. They say that if you and your partner can get through a reno, you can get through anything.

Kate: Discovering that we worked really well on projects together helped me begin to see a long-term future with Mike. I got excited when I thought about all the things we could accomplish together.

Mike: In 2022, we bought another property that we planned to flip—a 1980s bungalow cabin in Georgina, Ontario.

Kate: We turned it into a minimal, Nordic-style open-concept rural cabin and added a sauna and a garage.

Mike: When it came time to sell the property, we realized we were pretty attached to it. We imagined ourselves living there one day. We decided to keep it and rent it out on Airbnb instead of selling. Then I bought another property in Simcoe County to flip. I was able to turn building cabins and renovating into my main source of income, though I still do tattoos on the side.

Kate: Getting married wasn’t a huge priority for me. But, as we started envisioning all these plans together, it felt like the final step of solidarity before we really intertwined our lives. In early 2024, I told Mike how I felt and that I wanted to get married before we continued on this trajectory.

Mike: I can be very project-oriented—we both are—and at times I felt like I wanted to get all these projects done before we got married. But I realized we could do all those things while being married. I knew that I loved Kate and wanted to spend the rest of my life with her.

Kate: On one of our trips to New York, I fell in love with the designs of American jeweller Pamela Love. I showed Mike three of her rings that I really liked, and I ended up choosing one that had a chunky medieval band with a worn-in quality. I chose an elongated cushion-cut diamond to go with it.

Mike: I knew I wanted to propose to Kate at our cabin, but wasn’t sure when. One day, in the fall, she told me that there had been a cancellation on Airbnb and suggested that we go up ourselves for the weekend. I knew that was my moment. I had to make up an excuse to drive last-minute to Detroit, since the jeweller sent the ring there for me to pick up. I told Kate I needed some supplies for the cottage I was working on.

Kate: I really didn’t suspect anything.

Mike: One morning, we were going for a walk around the property with our coffees. We jokingly call it “walking the estate” because we daydream about our plans, like getting rid of certain trees or building an outhouse. As we were walking, I was getting more and more nervous.

Kate: At this point, I definitely could tell that something was up with Mike. As we were talking about our ideas for the land, gardening and renovations, he said something along the lines of, “But before we do all of that, I would love it if you would be my wife.” We have a cedar forest that makes up about half of our property, with a natural clearing in the middle of it, and that’s where he got down on one knee. It was a moment that I had imagined and romanticized for years, and I was elated that it was finally here.

Mike: I had organized a surprise engagement party with our friends back in Toronto, so we drove back to the city. That night was the most drunk we’ve both gotten in a long time.

Kate: A couple of weekends after we got engaged, we picked a date—September 27, 2025—and started planning.

Mike: Our cabin has so much emotional value for us, so we decided to get married there. Our plan was to do the ceremony in the cedar forest, in the same clearing where I had proposed. Then we’d do dinner and dancing under a tent on our front lawn, set up a bar in the garage, and have a firepit going nearby as another hangout spot.

Kate: We both love DIY projects, so we made a lot of the decor ourselves. My best friend helped me sew nearly 100 metres of multicoloured bunting to hang up in the tent alongside twinkly fairy lights. We spent a few days cutting endless triangles and sewing it all together. We were going for a whimsical A Midsummer Night’s Dream medieval fair vibe. We wanted it to feel intentional but also relaxed. One of my best friends, Emily, is a florist and agreed to do all our florals—lots of wildflowers, cosmos and amaranth.

Mike: We had some giant concrete countertops lying around that we had initially bought for the kitchen of our cabin, so I used those to build the bar in our garage. Kate sourced a chandelier and rugs from Facebook Marketplace to make the space feel more put-together and less like a garage.

Kate: I was looking through the portfolio of our photographer, Ryanne Hollies, and saw that someone at a past wedding had put a disco ball on their head, which made for some really funny photos. Mike said, “What if we did that with something super goofy, like animal masks?” Our friends helped us make 10 papier-mâché masks of local woodland creatures, which really made use of our art school backgrounds.

Mike: In 2024, a massive winter storm felled two giant trees on our property. We figured we could use the wood to build benches for our guests to sit on during the ceremony. Our neighbour has a giant sawmill and let us mill the trees for free.

Kate: As chronic under-estimators, we left a lot of stuff to the last month, like building the seating and the bar. We approached the whole thing in a cavalier way, thinking we’d just be able to make things happen. It could have been more stressful, but it was honestly okay. We’d worked together on so much in the past that everything just felt like another challenge we would get through.

Mike: Kate was on fire. She’d done a lot of the pre-work to make sure our vendors and rentals were ready. I was just lugging stuff around. I strung up some tall, spindly saplings that were due to be felled inside the tent to give it a foresty feeling. They were attached to the tent poles with zip ties, and we put them in water at the base of the poles to keep them from wilting. I actually got a rash from fire ants because I was moving so much wood around.

Kate: Three weeks before the wedding, I still didn’t have a dress. A family friend was supposed to custom-make it for me, but as we got closer to the date, our schedules were misaligned. So I manically searched the internet for 12 hours straight and found the perfect one from a British store called Rat and Boa—a gauzy silk slip with an open back. It had a fairy tale quality to it, like Liv Tyler in The Lord of the Rings.

Mike: I really struggled with finding a suit. I don’t like wearing dress shirts. They feel uncomfortable to me. I would rather be in overalls. So I ended up getting a linen jacket, a vest that I wore over a nice tank top and pants that felt airy so I wasn’t sweating like crazy.

Kate: The day before the wedding, my bridesmaids came up to the cabin and helped out with final touches. It was a crazy day. My florist friend Emily was making bouquets into the evening. She had tried to source a specific micro black-eyed Susan, but she couldn’t find any. Then she noticed some growing naturally next door, so I went over to ask my neighbour if we could pick a few blooms, and she said yes. They made my bouquet feel perfect. I also hand-foraged cattails and wild grasses for Emily to construct our ceremony installation out of.

Mike: My best friend’s in-laws live just south of our cabin in Uxbridge, about 20 minutes away. I was able to stay there with my groomsmen the night before. We had booked most of our guests at a hotel nearby, the Jackson’s Point Ramada, so we hired a bus service to shuttle everyone between the hotel and the cabin in school buses.

Kate: Mike’s sister, Elanna, is a makeup influencer, so she did my hair and makeup. We took our first-look pictures at the Thomas Foster Memorial in Uxbridge, a beautiful church-like mausoleum that was built for a former mayor of Toronto. Then it was back to the cabin for our wedding.

Mike: The ceremony started around 4 p.m. It was quick, under 20 minutes.

Kate: Mike and I wrote our own vows. I was extremely nervous since I don’t like public speaking.

Mike: We found out afterward that no one could really hear us since we weren’t mic’d up. But I don’t think people minded because they were out in the forest, which was a cool and fun experience in itself.

Kate: It was incredibly special to get married in the exact spot where Mike proposed. I’m happy that I can forever go back to that spot and feel the magic of the milestone moments that happened there. From there, we moved on to cocktail hour, where we had an oyster bar from Island Oysters.

Mike: Our dinner was from Big Doug’s BBQ, a local barbecue spot down the street from our cabin. Doug has a giant wood-fired barbecue on a trailer that he hauls around.

Kate: Dinner was rustic but really well-executed. We served it buffet-style in the tent, and there was prime rib, fresh corn and grilled peaches. There were speeches, then I carried out the cake. I wanted the wedding to feel informal and not too serious.

Mike: We’re both into electronic music, so the goal for our after-dinner dance party was to turn it into a rave. We started off with some early 2000s indie and classic rock for our older relatives to enjoy. Then we pivoted into some pretty heavy dance music later in the evening. We had one person throw up—I think due to too many mushroom pills. But I think that every good party should have at least one person throw up.

Kate: Around 9 or 10 p.m., Mike and I crept off and re-entered wearing animal masks. We told our DJ that we were coming back with a surprise, so they set off the smoke machine. The masks were a hit.

Mike: Once people put a mask on, they started dancing a little crazier. I think they felt like they were embodying a different character. Everyone felt comfortable getting weird. People love a prop because it makes you feel like you’re not actually being seen.

Kate: I have a hilarious photo of my 90-year-old great-aunt rocking a fox mask in her party dress. All the parents loved them. I love an early bedtime, so we cut the DJ off at 1:30 a.m., and everyone got back on the buses to go back to the hotel. Mike and I spent the night at our cabin.

Mike: I was so wired on espresso martinis that I was still wide awake.

Kate: It was such a crazy day. It was hard to fall asleep. Before we went to bed, we went through our guest book and read everyone’s messages in it, which was a nice way to end the day.

Mike: Our wedding went way better than either of us could have imagined. Honestly, it was fantastic.

Kate: Mike and I went to Italy for a two-week honeymoon in Puglia two days after the wedding. We both love pasta and eating and taking naps. We turned it into a bike trip, since we’d done that in Germany a few years before and it was a lot of fun. Google Maps doesn’t keep up with Italy in its rural areas, though, so we ended up biking through some farmers’ fields, covered in mud and grapes.

Mike: Our next big plan is to relocate from Toronto to our cabin full-time in the winter. I’m excited to putz around and stay busy with projects. Until then, we’ll continue to rent out the cabin in summer and fall.

Kate: I’m a Toronto person, but my family has always had a cottage, and I really love it up there. It’s so peaceful. Someday, I can’t wait to point out the clearing to our kids and say, “This is where Mommy and Daddy got hitched.”

Cheat Sheet

Date: September 27, 2025 Photography: Ryanne Hollies Videography: Chloe Doucet Wedding venue: Mill Pond Cabin
Officiant: All Seasons Weddings, Cecilia Craig Florals: Olwen Floral Food: Big Doug’s BBQ Cake: Sorshi World
DJ: Fawn Big Canoe Kate’s dress: Rat and Boa Mike’s outfit: John Varvatos