Micro Weddings: Ilya and Ashley

Ashley Enman, a 29-year-old events and marketing coordinator, met Ilya Marvin Ilyashyk, a 30-year-old front-end developer, in 2017, when they both worked at Canoe. After nine months, they started dating, eventually moving abroad to Australia. In 2020, they returned to Toronto, where they got engaged two years later. Last year, they were wed at the lakeside in front of nine family members. Here’s how it all came together.

Ilya: In October of 2017, I was working at Canoe, one of Toronto’s swankiest restaurants. It was a way to pay the bills while I pursued a career in acting.

Ashley: I had just started working at Canoe, which was a dream come true for me. I felt like it was the pinnacle of the tourism industry, and I was super excited to be there. When I met Ilya, my first thought was, This guy looks like he hates this place.

Ilya: I remember meeting Ashley and thinking she looked like trouble. I’m not sure why. I trained her and would tease her about how much she loved Canoe.

Ashley: We began working together quite closely on all these long shifts. Weirdly enough, we worked a lot of weddings together. We became good friends, and after about nine months, we very naturally were like, “Should we just start dating?” We just got along so well. Ilya has a great sense of humour.

Ilya: I love Ashley’s smile. That’s why I crack a lot of jokes, just to see it come out. She also has this great “Let’s do it!” attitude. We quickly discovered that we shared a love of food, wine and travel. And so, within four months of starting to date, we decided to travel around Europe together. We visited Ireland, Amsterdam and France.

Ashley: We loved our time in Amsterdam, so about a year into dating, we decided to move to the Netherlands together. This would be our first time as roommates, and we just dove right in. But we quickly realized that Amsterdam wasn’t for us, so we travelled around western Europe and eventually moved to Australia. We both got hospitality jobs, and Ilya took on some acting gigs.

Ilya: It was beautiful in Australia. But, one year into our new life, the pandemic hit, and we were forced to come home.

Ashley: Travelling really shaped us as a couple, and dealing with the stress of changing circumstances over and over again strengthened our relationship. We learned how to work together. I always say, if you want to test your relationship, just go on vacation.

Ilya: We’re perfect together. It’s as simple as that. When we flew back to Toronto, Ashley fell into a job in property management, and I found a full-time job in tech. It felt like a natural progression to settle down together.

Ashley: Because nothing about us is traditional, we didn’t have a formal engagement. It was in 2022, on Ilya’s birthday. We’d had a nice dinner out.

Ilya: I had been holding on to a ring for quite some time. For some reason I felt brave that night, maybe because it was my birthday. I pulled out the ring when it felt like the right moment—once we were home and sitting on the couch in our PJs.

Ashley: I was completely flabbergasted. I was not expecting it at all. We had always known we are soulmates and had talked about getting engaged, but we’d never looked at rings together. Ilya knows me very well, though, and the ring he picked out was beautiful.

Ilya: I was mostly worried about finding a ring to fit her tiny hand. But luckily it fit perfectly.

Ashley: To us, weddings should be about your love. It’s your day, and you should do whatever you want, not what other people expect of you. We are both fortunate to have families who didn’t put pressure on us to have an expensive or traditional wedding. At this point, they know how casual we are about these things. We knew we wanted to put our money toward great photography and, eventually, our honeymoon.

Ilya: After working in hospitality and seeing how wasteful and expensive weddings are, we knew the traditional route wasn’t for us. The moment you say you’re getting married, the price of everything goes up by 50 per cent. So we decided to have a super informal ceremony at the R. C. Harris Water Treatment Plant. Fun fact: that’s where they filmed some scenes for The Shape of Water.

Ashley: In our eyes, being by the water in Toronto was the next best thing to having a tropical wedding. We still got the beautiful scenery without the price tag of a destination wedding.

Ilya: So, on a windy Friday in September of 2023, Ashley and I got ready at our apartment together.

Ashley: We’d both rented our wedding attire. To me, since a wedding dress is only worn once, it doesn’t make sense to spend absurd amounts of money on it. I tried on a few dresses and found one that fit like a glove at the Fitzroy. As soon as I put it on, I knew. It was $120 to rent.

Ilya: I felt awesome in my tux. I rented it from Andrew’s Formals for $290. I was really happy with how the look came together.

Ashley: We decided to make our wedding colour blue. For decor, I bought some ribbon and flowers for $30 and DIY’d our corsages and boutonnieres. We also ordered a beautiful bouquet from Wild North Flowers for $420. We knew a big bright bouquet would photograph really well on film. Plus, I wanted to dry out and press the bouquet and boutonniere flowers to frame and have forever.

We drove over to the venue, where nine members of our immediate family were gathered. We did our walk “down the aisle” together—around the side of the water plant and over to where our family stood by the waterfront. My cousin married us, which was really special.

Ilya: After a brief ceremony where we read our vows and exchanged rings from Mejuri, we took family photos for about 45 minutes. Then we said our goodbyes and left with our photographers to adventure around the city.

Ashley: Back at our condo, we popped a bottle of champagne and made sure to capture the moment.

Ilya: We wanted a chill, fun day, just visiting our favourite spots together. We captured things we’d want to one day look back on, like our condo, our neighbourhood in the east end, our car.

Ashley: With our photographers following us, we got onto the King streetcar and took some cool candid shots. We got off where it all started, at Canoe. But, this time, we were husband and wife.

Ilya: From there, we watched the harvest moon as it settled over Toronto.

Ashley: When I look back on the photos now, I’m transported back to that moment. It was such a great day, and we have zero regrets.

Ilya: Marriage has been amazing so far. We took up cycling and biked 280 kilometres together this summer. We’re also thinking of moving abroad again.

Ashley: We are heading on our honeymoon this fall. We’re going to travel around Italy for two weeks and then fly over to Portugal. It’s all planned to a tee, of course. On past trips, we were super budget conscious. But, for our honeymoon, we saved up and are excited to enjoy the luxuries we can now afford, like nice hotels.

Ilya: Wherever life takes us, we will go. I just love referring to Ashley as my wife.

Grand total: $6,045

Date: September 29, 2023 Photography: $5,000, Ryanne Hollies and Brjánn of 3B Photography Flowers: $420, Wild North Flowers Corsages and boutonnieres: $30, DIY Bride’s dress: $120, rented from the Fitzroy Bride’s veil: $35, David’s Bridal Bride’s shoes: $60, Shoe Factory Groom’s tux: $290, rented from Andrew’s Formals Champagne: $90, Taittinger