Read Weddings: Brjánn and Ryanne

Brjánn Batista Bettencourt, a 36-year-old photographer, met Ryanne Hollies, a 32-year-old photographer, in 2011, when they were both studying at Toronto Metropolitan University and playing for the school’s varsity volleyball teams. The pair began dating a year later, followed by a long courtship as their career paths converged into photography. After shooting hundreds of weddings themselves, they began dreaming of their own. Brjánn proposed to Ryanne on a trip to Montreal in 2021. Their July 2023 wedding was an intimate 60-person affair between a Richmond Street modern furniture shop and a Portland Street restaurant. Here’s how it all came together.

Brjánn: Ryanne and I met in 2011 at TMU. We were first-year athletes for the school’s varsity volleyball teams. I was studying my second degree—a bachelor’s in journalism.

Ryanne: I was an undergrad studying new media. Because the men’s and women’s volleyball teams practise and travel together, we got to know each other. I always thought that Brjánn was the best-looking guy on the team.

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Brjánn: I thought Ryanne was cute too. But I wasn’t sure if she liked me because I’m short for a volleyball player—I’m five foot 11, and some of the guys on the team are six foot five. I looked like someone’s little brother when we did our team huddles.

Ryanne: In January of 2012, at the start of the next semester, Brjánn invited the men’s and women’s teams to a bar night on College Street.

Brjánn: I was actually working at Crawford Bar at the time as their nightlife photographer. The men’s team was looking to celebrate a recent tournament win. I was able to convince the owner to put both our teams on the guest list that night.

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Ryanne: At the bar, Brjánn came up to me and told me I was his favourite setter, which is a volleyball position. We chatted a bit at the bar, and I definitely felt excited about the connection. After that night, we continued the conversation over Facebook Messenger.

Brjánn: A few weeks after that bar night, I asked Ryanne out on our first date. I noticed that she’d often bring her camera out to games and events, and my concentration in school was in photojournalism. So I thought we could do a photo walk date. I figured it’d be more fun than just awkwardly sitting and talking.

Ryanne: We walked around near campus. I was just getting into photography, and Brjánn showed me some cool techniques.

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Brjánn: We ended our date at the Queen and Beaver for drinks. We talked about volleyball drama on our teams and learned about where we’re each from—Ryanne is from Calgary, and I’m from Ottawa.

Ryanne: Our date was fun in a very casual way. The conversation felt easy. We walked home together that night since we didn’t live too far apart, and Brjánn held my hand. I remember feeling very happy about that.

Brjánn: Because we were both still playing volleyball, we didn’t want to move too quickly and create an awkward situation if it didn’t work out. So we kept things slow until the summer of 2013.

Ryanne: But we did keep hanging out. We’d go out for dinner—Guu was our favourite—and we watched a lot of movies together. Brjánn would show me ones I’d never seen. Then I’d take him out to museums and art galleries.

Brjánn: As I got to know Ryanne, I found that she was kind and empathetic. She’s really easy to talk to, and she’s always in a good, positive mood. She always has a really big smile on her face, which I liked since I’m a bit more stoic. It was nice to be around somebody who was so fun and easy-going. And she was always so thoughtful. I always felt cared for and listened to.

Ryanne: I thought Brjánn was interesting and creative. I was always in awe of all the work he did and the career he was pursuing. He’s very thoughtful and kind too. On the outside, he can seem a little bit harder to figure out, but I liked the challenge of getting to know him.

Brjánn: In April of 2015, right before we both graduated, I moved in with Ryanne to her place at Church and Wellesley.

Ryanne: My roommate was moving out, so it was good timing. We got our dog two weeks after that. It was back-to-back milestones.

Brjánn: After I graduated, I worked a few photojournalism contracts and picked up freelance gigs in between. I first started shooting weddings as a favour for friends, but it quickly became a bigger part of my career. Around 2018, Ryanne and I decided to go all-in on wedding photography together.

Ryanne: At the end of school, I got a job working as a gallery curator’s assistant, alongside other odd jobs working at restaurants. As Brjánn was getting busier with weddings, I started helping him out—I built him a website and helped with photo editing. I was eager to have my own style in photography too, so I decided to build out my own portfolio and started picking up photography gigs.

Brjánn: It’s been fun to work with Ryanne and have a professional partnership. We’re both still independent creatives with our own identities. We don’t necessarily advertise ourselves as a duo, but we help each other out. On the back end of things, we’re a team.

Ryanne: Attending as many weddings as we do, we’ve thought a lot about our own. The more weddings we shot, the more I thought, I can see why they did this.

Brjánn: Ryanne and I have been pretty committed to each other for a while, so we didn’t necessarily feel the need to get married right away. We were busy building our careers.

Ryanne: In 2019, we started thinking more seriously about getting married. It felt like our professional lives were on the right track. Getting engaged felt like the natural next step. I loved the bride’s jewellery at one wedding we shot that year, and I learned that her friend, Liane Vaz, had made it. Brjánn and I got to meet Liane at that same wedding, and Brjánn loved her designs too. Getting excited about the ring designs felt like a moment for us. I didn’t actually have any input on the ring, but Brjánn has great taste, so I trusted him.

Brjánn: Liane’s designs were so interesting and alternative. I did some research and discovered that she made custom pieces, and in the fall of 2019, I worked with her to make something for Ryanne. It had a white sapphire, since I knew that Ryanne wouldn’t like the idea of an unethical diamond, and lab-made diamonds weren’t as widely available as they are now. We chose a circular stone set in gold with triangular stones on either side. I had the ring ready by December of 2019.

Ryanne: Brjánn and I planned a vacation to Los Angeles in May of 2020, just to reset and get some time away. But, after Covid hit, we had to cancel the trip.

Brjánn: I was planning to propose on that trip in an analog photo booth, which LA has in spades. But, when we had to cancel, I changed the plan to propose in Montreal. We had gone there for my 30th birthday and hung out at a bar in the Plateau one night that also had an analog photo booth. Apparently, it’s the only colour analog photo booth left in the country. Between all the lockdowns and life in general, we didn’t manage to go on the trip until October of 2021.

Ryanne: Brjánn seemed really insistent on us taking a trip to Montreal, so I suspected something was up. There was another round of lockdowns announced just before we left, but we still decided to go, even if it just wound up being a road trip to hang out in Montreal and eat takeout in our Airbnb.

Brjánn: I managed to convince the owner of the bar to open up the place for us as a private experience. Then I told Ryanne I’d been able to book a time slot at the bar just for us. We got there and had a drink, and I told Ryanne we should get a picture taken at the photo booth. We did one round of prints first so I could make sure the machine was working and the framing was right. Then, for the second round of photos, I pulled out the ring and asked her if she wanted to get married. The whole idea was that the experience would be captured, but the proposal would still be intimate and personal.

Ryanne: I had no idea that Brjánn had planned the bar visit as a proposal, so I was surprised when he pulled out the ring—but also very happy and excited. It was sweet how much thought and care he put into that moment.

Brjánn: We took more photos in the booth together, then the bar played some of our favourite songs and gave us some celebratory drinks. We got takeout from our favourite restaurant in Montreal and had champagne on the balcony back at our Airbnb.

Ryanne: Wedding planning took a while. Our original idea was to get married in Portugal, where Brjánn’s family is from. But that would have involved a lot of logistics, and we had two really busy wedding seasons for work—our schedule gets booked out 12 to 18 months in advance. By the end of 2022, we saw that we had three weeks free the following July. We earmarked that period to potentially do our own wedding, but it wasn’t until March of 2023 that we pulled the trigger. We know the ins and outs of wedding planning, so we figured we could plan it in four months.

Brjánn: We found our wedding venue through a happy accident. In 2022, we shot a wedding for Chris Hanz, who owned a furniture store at Richmond and Bathurst, AAVVGG, that looked like a modern art gallery. We became friends with him and learned that he was moving to France with his wife and closing the store. Before they did, though, Chris was hosting these super cool events and live music shows in the space. Responding to one of his Instagram stories about them, I jokingly asked if he did weddings. To my surprise, Chris was super on board with it. The store has a mezzanine with an upstairs level that overlooks the main space. We loved that element. It felt like a concert.

Ryanne: We booked the Ace Hotel as our getting-ready venue and Vela on Portland Street for our dinner. Everything was a five-minute walk from each other so that our guests wouldn’t have to deal with Toronto traffic. We’d have 58 guests in total.

Brjánn: We wanted everyone to have fun, so we told our guests that the dress code was garden-party chic. We didn’t want it to feel like a stuffy black-tie event. We’ve seen how weddings can go really overboard and start affecting your experience as a couple, so wanted to do something more easy-going. And we definitely didn’t want it to feel like work. We wanted to keep things simple and beautiful without going too far.

Ryanne: We made the timeline simple and left space for downtime so we could actually enjoy ourselves and not feel rushed. We’ve seen too many couples start the day exhausted before the ceremony even begins, and we were determined to avoid that. By starting later in the afternoon and condensing the schedule, we gave ourselves time to breathe and soak in the moments.

Brjánn: We also didn’t want our guests to feel pressured by tradition. We ditched the wedding party and instead had my nephews as unofficial best men and our sisters as witnesses. Guests could simply be guests. We sent invitations with sample images of the dress code so everyone knew to show up ready to have fun, without the stiffness of ties and rigid formality.

Ryanne: I learned about the designer Kamperett after shooting a bride who wore one of their dresses. I like that their designs have a looser fit and are elegant without being overly formal. I knew I didn’t want something super fitted, so I bought one of their dresses online that had a slip dress underneath with an overlay on top. But the slip dress ended up being very thin and see-through. I reached out to Boni Soto, a dress designer in Toronto, who helped me make the dress my own. She made me a less-revealing slip that I wore under the Kamperett overlay. She also made me puffy sleeves, a collar and a veil that looked like a bow. I wore the overlay and blow veil accessories for the ceremony, then I took them off and just wore the slip with the puffy sleeves and collar for the rest of the evening. I also got a hat made as a homage to my mom’s wedding.

Brjánn: I’m a big ’90s guy, and I’ve always loved fashion. For my wedding outfit, I envisioned a loose-fitting accountant-style suit, like the kind my dad wore when I was growing up. One of the grooms I shot in my first year of wedding photography was wearing a Tiger of Sweden suit that looked interesting, so that name was always in the back of my mind. I ended up getting a loose-fitting Tiger of Sweden suit with a thicker collared shirt that was very ’90s. My dad and mom came with me to see the suit, and my dad told me he had a tie that would match it perfectly. I wore it as a homage to him. For my late-night outfit, I wanted something comfortable, so I got a beautiful white knitted button-up shirt from Uncle Otis and wore it with a pair of baggy green pants I’ve had for years.

Ryanne: I got my hair and makeup done with my sister, my two sisters-in-law and my two moms, and in a separate room from Brjánn. It was nice to have some girl time. The makeup artist and hairstylist are friends that I met from being in the industry and working at the same weddings. Brjánn and I didn’t want to have a traditional first look, which can sometimes feel a little too staged. Instead, we saw each other naturally as we got ready together in our hotel room—an organic, grounding moment that felt truer to us. The last piece, which pulled everything together, was the bouquet. I told our florist that I wanted something that would fit in my purse, since I didn’t want to have to carry flowers around, and she delivered.

Brjánn: I also wanted a bouquet! The florist did a beautiful job making one that was really funky and not quite feminine or masculine. It really completed my look. Our florist, Suzannah at Bloem, was recommended by a former bride who’s also a florist. We wanted someone creative who could take our loose ideas and elevate them into something artful.

Ryanne: Brjánn and I walked into the ceremony together with our dog instead of being escorted. We first saw this at a Swedish wedding nearly ten years ago and loved the symbolism of entering into marriage as a unit. Seeing everyone together for the first time was overwhelming. We wrote our own vows, and it felt special to tell each other things that we don’t say every day—things we truly, deeply feel. We both cried a fair amount.

Brjánn: The whole moment felt ethereal and out-of-body. Sunlight was coming in and filling the room. Ryanne looked like an angel the way the light was hitting her. It was the most beautiful I’d ever seen her look. After we exchanged rings, we took photos of each other at the altar. It really helped us remember what it was like to be in that moment. Some of our favourite photos from that day are the ones we took of each other. It’s part of our daily life to photograph each other, and those frames from our wedding carry a layer of intimacy we can feel every time we look at them. Our close friends Wyatt, Barbara and Zach insisted on contributing even though we wanted them to just enjoy the day. Wyatt and Barbara became our official photographers, and Zach was our videographer. The entire wedding was shot on analog film exclusively.

Ryanne: Our neighbour and close friend Karl was our officiant. We didn’t edit or even review his script, and hearing his words for the first time at the ceremony made them deeply personal. We did a champagne toast after the ceremony, then moseyed over to Vela for cocktail hour. Everyone was out on the patio having a good time.

Brjánn: Ryanne and I leaned in to the idea of our wedding being like a concert, so we had a merch table with custom tote bags, T-shirts, temporary tattoos and wine bottles with a custom label. Then we flowed into dinner. Our guests could order almost anything off Vela’s menu. We had a DJ spinning real vinyl all night, and I even brought some records from my own collection. For our first dance, we had them play “100” by Dean Blunt off of my vinyl of Black Metal. It’s been a super meaningful song for both of us since 2014, and dancing to it was really special for us both.

Ryanne: Brjánn and I sat together at our own table at the front, which was a nice way to take everything in. We had the restaurant until 1 a.m., and people had a blast dancing.

Brjánn: Most of our guests were staying at the Ace Hotel, so almost everyone had another drink at the upstairs patio there. Then we went back to our suite for an after-after-party. I think people were riding the high from the wedding, like we were. Ryanne and I went to bed around 4 or 5 a.m. It was a lot of fun. People really lived it up that night.

Ryanne: I felt so happy about our wedding. The energy was electric, and the dance floor was packed until last call. Everyone was buzzing about the food and cocktails. It was everything I’d hoped for and more.

Brjánn: It all felt so worth it. Sometimes people plan weddings and can’t wait for them to be over because there’s a lot of stress or anxiety about them. But it was such a great experience. I would totally do it again. It was the perfect way for us to celebrate and do it with the people that we love. I wouldn’t have changed anything.

Ryanne: We went on a mini-moon to Montreal right after the wedding for five days. We ate a bunch of food, drank a bunch of wine and chilled in the park. Then, for our one-year anniversary, we went to the Lake O’Hara Lodge in BC.

Brjánn: Getting married was a nice way to enter a new chapter in our relationship. Fundamentally, we still love each other. Nothing at the core had changed. But it was nice to share that commitment and profound love we have with each other and the important people who are a part of our lives.

Ryanne: Married life is going great so far. Nothing has really changed, but it definitely feels different. It’s started a new chapter for us. We’ve been enjoying this next stage in our journey together. It’s been nice to call Brjánn my husband.

Cheat Sheet

Date: July 21st 2023 Photography: Barbara Lanzat, Wyatt Clough Videography: Zach Hertzman Planner: Attia Events Getting-ready venue: Ace Hotel Toronto Wedding venue: AAVVGG Officiant: Karl Werleman Florals: Bloem Seating chart: Attia Events Reception venue: Vela DJ: Record Collective Guest favours: Traynor Vineyard, Etsy Ryanne’s outfit: Kamperett, SOTO, Oak and Fort Brjánn outfit: Tiger of Sweden, Uncle Otis, Dr. Martens Ryanne’s Hair: Rachel Anne Hair Brjánn’s Hair: Salon Soap Makeup: Jen Cronin Rings: Liane Vaz Designs