Micro Weddings: Ginette and Michael

Michael Nguyen, a 33-year-old health care manager at a hospital, first met Ginette Garces, a 30-year-old analyst at an engineering firm, through mutual friends at the University of Toronto in 2018. After a series of Instagram DMs and FaceTimes, the couple started dating a month later, which led to a 2022 proposal at Humber Bay Shores and a destination wedding at the Vatican in Rome. Here’s how their big day came together.

Michael: One evening, in December of 2018, I was studying in a lounge at U of T’s New College. I saw a group of friends at a table near me, just casually chatting and hanging out. I knew some of them, so I went over to say hi. That’s when I first saw Ginette.

Ginette: I was actually living in Windsor at the time—I was getting my second degree in engineering there, but I did my first undergrad degree in arts and science at U of T, so I went back to Toronto often to visit. A bunch of my friends have birthdays around the same time, so we met up before going out to dinner. When Michael came over and introduced himself, I didn’t think much of it. We were just talking as a group about the end of exams and what our friends were going to do after they graduated. We joked that once you finish school, everyone either takes up running or goes on a trip to Japan.

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Michael: I was instantly attracted to Ginette and wanted to get to know her better. The next day, I messaged our mutual friend, and she gave me Ginette’s Instagram handle. I DMed her asking if she liked running, trying to continue the conversation we started at New College. But she left me on read. So, a week later, I sent her the same message.

Ginette: He double-texted! We joked about that—how he was persistent. Our initial DMs were very light-hearted banter. We were talking about our plans for the future, and I joked that I thought 24 (how old I was at the time) was the perfect age to settle down and have kids. We went back and forth like that for a while. I was back in Windsor for school at this point, so Michael and I started doing FaceTimes to get to know each other.

Michael: We talked about how we both wanted to mirror the perseverance and love of our parents, who came from nothing and worked hard to give us the lives we had. We also both wanted to establish ourselves, have kids and settle down to raise a family. Eventually, we were messaging and video-calling almost every day. A month later, in January of 2019, I finally got Ginette to come back to Toronto for a first date. She came over to my condo in Liberty Village. Our plan was to watch a movie, then go out to the Reservoir Lounge and listen to live jazz.

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Ginette: When we were texting, Michael and I joked about doing face masks together. And I’m really into horror movies. So we did face masks and watched Insidious.

Michael: It may seem weird that Ginette came over to watch a movie for a first date, but we were already so comfortable from all our conversations. It felt very natural to be around her.

Ginette: I was a little bit nervous leading up to the date, but once we met up, it was great. I had a lot of fun with him. Three days later, we made our relationship official. On the weekends, Michael and I would take turns going back and forth between Toronto and Windsor. We’d go out on dinner dates, hikes, and to check out festivals or events, or we’d just stay in and watch horror movies.

Michael: I met Ginette’s family a couple of months after we started dating. Then Ginette met my family, who live in Halifax, eight months later, when they were in Toronto for my sister’s wedding.

Ginette: Once I was done school, in 2022, I planned to move back home to Toronto. So Michael and I knew that dating long-distance was only temporary.

Michael: Covid, as bad as it was, had some benefits for us. Because Ginette switched to doing school remotely, she could spend a lot more time in Toronto—and we could see each other and be together more often. Ginette would drive from Windsor to pick me up from work, then we’d drive to my place, order food and hang out. It was so nice to be together after I’d had a tough day. She always put me first.

Ginette: Michael has always made me feel very safe and stable. I never felt insecure at all during our relationship. And I loved seeing him interact with my parents, my sister and my cousins. It felt like he belonged with my family. It just felt natural.

Michael: Marriage had come up in conversation pretty early on in our relationship. It’s something we both wanted to do eventually.

Ginette: I had actually mapped out my five-year plan in a notebook. I was writing out a timeline that showed what year we should get married and when we could start having kids based on my school co-op terms and graduation.

Michael: I wanted to wait until Ginette finished school, in the spring of 2022, before I proposed. So, in 2021, we started shopping around for rings.

Ginette: We found a jeweller we both liked, EC Diamonds, and I settled on an oval-shaped diamond with a hidden halo and a rectangular band.

Michael: I had the ring ready around September of 2021. In October, I asked Ginette’s parents for their permission to marry her, but I waited until the end of April 2022 to propose, which is when all of Ginette’s classes and exams were done. I got all of her friends in on it. They planned a get-together at one of her friends’ homes on a Friday night, then the next afternoon, I’d pick up Ginette.

Ginette: The Friday-night hang was a sleepover with a bunch of my girlfriends. A few of us were in serious relationships, so we joked that it’d be our last sleepover while we were all unmarried. My family got a golden retriever, Harlo, over the pandemic. So our plan for Saturday was that Michael would pick up me and my sister, then we’d all take Harlo to Humber Bay Shores. It’s one of our favourite locations because it’s right by the lake and has views of the CN Tower in the background. Harlo loves swimming there too.

Michael: My friends went to the spot at Humber Bay Shores early to set up the scene. They had a picnic blanket laid out with some roses and balloons.

Ginette: When we got close to Humber Bay, my sister said she wanted to stop and take a photo. So the two of us got out of the car. Michael said he’d go and park and told us to meet him by the spot where Harlo usually swims.

Michael: Meanwhile, I drove over to the proposal spot to make sure everything was set up. A few moments later, I saw Ginette and her sister with Harlo approaching us.

Ginette: I was so confused. I thought maybe it was a surprise party to celebrate the end of my exams. Then I saw Michael get down on one knee, and I realized what was happening. I was so excited about getting engaged. Michael and I were in the car driving back to his place and I told him I wanted to call my grandma and my family, but Michael said I shouldn’t because we were meeting up with them the next day.

Michael: Her family and my family were all in our condo party room for a surprise engagement party—there were about 30 people in total. I lied to Ginette and told her I’d booked a fancy dinner that night, so we should get dressed up a little bit. Then I took her down to the party room, where everyone was waiting.

Ginette: By May of 2023, we’d booked our wedding at Graydon Hall for the summer of 2024 and put down deposits on the venue, musicians, photography and flowers. We planned to have about 150 guests. But, as we started to think more about it, we had a change of heart.

Michael: All in, the wedding we wanted would have cost us over $120,000. That didn’t feel worth it to us. We realized we wanted to spend that money on a smaller destination wedding with about 50 people and do a family vacation afterward.

Ginette: I have some family in Italy. So we considered a vineyard wedding in Tuscany. But we realized it’d be too difficult for people to get around–we’d have to hire our own driver, which would cost $20,000. So we switched plans again and did a wedding in Rome. My family is Catholic, and our family friend is actually a priest in Rome. He suggested that we could get married at the Vatican.

Michael: We liked that it was centrally located, unlike the church where the priest that Ginette knew worked, which was in the suburbs.

Ginette: It was also free to get married at the Vatican with a donation—we gave 200 euros. The fee to get married at a church in Toronto would’ve been $1,000 or $2,000.

Michael: The process to apply for a marriage in the Vatican was surprisingly simple. There’s just an email address that you contact to request a date, and they just respond and say, “It’s booked.” We had to do a bunch of research and work ourselves, like getting the Archdiocese of Toronto to send some paperwork to the Archdiocese of Rome: Ginette’s baptismal paper and a questionnaire that I took since I wasn’t Catholic. We also learned that we needed to be civilly married before the Vatican wedding and would have to send those papers too. I knew what a privilege it was to get married at the Vatican, and I took it as an opportunity to learn about Catholicism and have conversations with Ginette about religion. I ended up embracing Catholicism, and we now see ourselves raising our kids under the religion.

Ginette: We got married at Toronto City Hall in June of 2023. It was very simple. The guests were my parents, my sister and a friend as well as Michael’s parents and sister, plus our photographer. We also got our florist to make a bouquet. And thankfully Graydon Hall returned our deposit, so we only lost $500 for the musicians we had booked for the original wedding.

Michael: The civil wedding was kind of weird for me. I knew it was official, but it wasn’t the grand celebration I’d anticipated. It just felt like another step toward getting married. Regardless, it was a happy day. We all went out to dim sum afterward.

Ginette: I wasn’t looking forward to dress shopping. I didn’t really know what I wanted or what would fit me best. I ended up at LoversLand on Ossington. The style consultant picked a dress designed by Alexandra Grecco, with a really low back and a corset-style bodice. It was an A-line dress, but it wasn’t too pouffy. It was perfect. With alterations, it cost about $6,000. I also bought a pair of shoes from Aldo to wear with it, which were $120.

Michael: I wanted a classic Italian suit—white jacket, white dress shirt, black bow tie and black pants. I went to Nota Bene Bespoke, a custom suit store in Liberty Village suggested by one of Ginette’s friends. The suit came in two months later, and I didn’t even need to get it altered. Everything cost about $1,400.

Ginette: My cousin in Rome did a lot of venue scouting for us. She discovered Villa Brasini, a beautiful Roman building with a nice area outside with a fountain, a dining room and a separate room for dancing. My mom happened to visit Rome around the same time, and her and my cousin gave it their stamp of approval. They had a great wedding package: for $32,000, it included almost everything—the venue, food, an open bar, entertainment, transportation, make-up, cake and guest favours.

Michael: Ginette and I flew to Rome four days before our wedding. We went straight to the Vatican from our flight, just to confirm that everything was booked. The next day, we saw the Chapel of the Choir, where the wedding would be held, for the first time. It was breathtaking.

Ginette: The day after that, on Tuesday, Michael and I did a joint bachelor/bachelorette bar hop, then our wedding was on Thursday. We both had separate rooms at the River Château Hotel. My mom, my sister and I got our hair and makeup done, and Michael’s sister came up to my room to hang out with us. It was pretty calm.

Michael: Our ceremony at the Vatican began at 4 p.m. I got there before Ginette, at 3, just to make sure our guests knew where to go. It was kind of confusing because our guests would have to go through a separate security entrance from the public entrance to get to the chapel. But there was some kind of conference going on at the same time, which created a huge lineup there. I was worried that not everyone would make it through in time. I told the guards that we were getting married and asked if they could come in. They said they had to wait just like everyone else. They did start moving the line a lot more quickly after I talked to them, though, and thankfully everyone made it inside on time. You could hear the gasps of each person who stepped in and saw the chapel for the first time. It’s a beautiful space.

Ginette: There were a lot of tourists staring at me as I made my way to the chapel, but I didn’t pay much attention to it. The Vatican staff put up curtains and a gate so that no one could see inside, which made things more intimate. Once I started walking down the aisle, the first thing I saw was Michael crying with a huge smile on his face.

Michael: The ceremony itself was about an hour long. We had a short Catholic mass, then we did some Filipino traditions to represent Ginette’s side of the family.

Ginette: Our family put a veil and beads on me and Michael to represent unity. The veil is called “belo” in Tagalog, and draping it over the bride and groom symbolizes us stepping into the world as one and the connection that marriage creates. The cord is referred to as “kordon” or sometimes “yugal,” and it represents an unbreakable bond and commitment. These traditions are deeply rooted in Filipino Catholic culture. My childhood friends, Michael’s best man and sister, and my cousins and uncle placed these on us.

Michael: After the ceremony, our guests went to the venue, Villa Brasini, for a cocktail hour outside in the gardens. There was a huge charcuterie board and a chef frying fresh calamari. Then Ginette and I went to Villa Borghese, a park in Rome, to take pictures.

Ginette: We were supposed to start dinner as soon as we arrived at the venue, but we felt so happy to be there with our friends and family that we just started doing shots and drinking and dancing with everyone. We even pulled our priest in to dance with us. Half an hour later, we finally started dinner. The hall was set up with two long tables—one for our family and the other for friends. We weren’t too picky about the decor. We gave our florist free range and told them we liked white flowers. They ended up doing peonies, which looked beautiful. Our venue also let us choose the colours of the lights, and we went with gold for Harlo, our golden retriever.

Michael: Our guests had an option of ravioli or carbonara to start, both with shaved truffle on top, then the second dish was swordfish with a tomato sauce.

Ginette: A violinist performed during dinner. Then I changed into a Vietnamese tea dress, which Michael’s mom bought for me, and Michael changed into a barong—a traditional Filipino men’s shirt, which belonged to my dad, for our first dance.

Michael: Our first dance was to “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” by Frankie Valli. We did our first dance and cake-cutting in our traditional outfits. It was a nice way to acknowledge our cultures.

Ginette: After dinner, there was more drinking and dancing, then we had late-night pizza and desserts. We ended the night around 1 a.m. We couldn’t stay up too late because we had a 5 a.m. train to the Dolomites the next day. I literally just went straight to bed.

Michael: About 20 of our family members joined us in the Dolomites. We stayed three nights at the Hotel Engel and ate really good food, went on hikes, enjoyed the views of the mountains and the lakes, and spent our evenings relaxing in the hotel’s spa.

Ginette: I felt so happy with how everything turned out. I was a bit nervous about not seeing the venue until a few days beforehand, but everything was beautiful. It was above and beyond my expectations.

Michael: Our wedding was exactly what we envisioned, having it be more of an experience for everyone and touring around Italy with our family and friends. I loved having that quality time with the people we care most about. I’m so glad that we switched our wedding plans—I only wish we’d made the decision earlier instead of losing some money on deposits.

Ginette: We’ve booked our honeymoon for March of 2025. We’ll spend two weeks in Vietnam to visit some of Michael’s family, then a week in the Philippines, which is where my family is from.

Michael: Our goal is for Ginette to come back alive—she has a severe peanut allergy, and peanuts are used a lot in Vietnamese cuisine.

Ginette: People always ask us if being married feels any different. It feels good! There’s no difference, to be honest.

Michael: It feels very natural. Besides our combined finances and our legal obligations to each other, it’s no different.

Grand total: $52,225

Date: May 23, 2024 Photography: $6,000, Elisa Rinaldi Getting ready venue: $700, River Château Hotel Ceremony venue: $200, Chapel of the Choir at St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican Reception venue and wedding package: $32,000, Villa Brasini Florist: $6,000 Bride’s dress: $6,000, Alexandra Grecco, LoversLand Bride’s shoes: $125, Aldo Groom’s outfit: $1,000, Nota Bene Bespoke Groom’s shoes: $200, Harry Rosen