Real Weddings: Morgan and Shannon

Morgan Wynn, a 33-year-old operations coordinator for a software start-up, first met Shannon Burns, a 32-year-old Virgin Radio host and content creator, through the Tumblr queer community in 2012. Their friendship began on the internet, since Morgan lived in the US and Shannon in Edmonton, but they met IRL in 2013 at a Pride event in New York. Regular friend-group vacations kept them in touch, and they made their relationship official in 2020. Morgan relocated to Toronto in the summer of 2022, and the couple were engaged that fall. Their intimate 30-person wedding took place at an upstate New York Airbnb in June of 2025, surrounded by apple orchards and farmland. Here’s how it all came together.

Shannon: In 2012, I was studying TV and radio at Niagara College, and I moved to Edmonton for an internship. At the time, Tumblr was a place where I could meet, chat and flirt with queer people. I didn’t know anyone in the city, so I posted asking if anyone there lived in Edmonton. Someone named Jenny reached out to me, and we became friends. She even ended up being my roommate for a while.

Morgan: I was active on queer Tumblr too. Jenny and I were internet friends at first, and when we’d Skype each other, Shannon would be in the background. I lived in North Carolina at the time, but a year later, Shannon and I both realized that we’d be at New York Pride in 2013. We met up briefly on a street corner, chatted for a few minutes and took a photo together.

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Shannon: A year after that, we were both at a music festival, Bonnaroo, and ended up running into each other in a huge crowd. We hung out at the festival, but Morgan was there with her girlfriend at the time, so it wasn’t romantic or flirty. I didn’t feel a strong attraction toward Morgan at the time, but that changed at the end of 2014, when some of our queer Tumblr friends got together and went on a trip to Cancun.

Morgan: I had just broken up with the person I was dating. There were five of us on the trip, and as soon as I saw Shannon there, I was infatuated. We kept sneaking away from the group to spend one-on-one time with each other. We had our first kiss on that trip.

Shannon: Our friend group continued to meet up for trips, so Morgan and I kept having opportunities to hang out. If we were both single at the time, we’d share a room or tent. We went camping in Banff and visited San Francisco and Miami on group trips.

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Morgan: I moved to Chicago in 2017, then Shannon moved back to Toronto in 2018. At the end of 2019, we did another group trip and met up in Toronto. I wasn’t dating anyone at the time, and Shannon was just out of a three-year relationship, so we hooked up again on that trip. I think that’s when we started considering being in a serious relationship with each other.

Shannon: When Covid hit, Morgan and I were video-calling every day. By May, we made our relationship official. I sent Morgan flowers with a note that said, “Will you be my girlfriend?” It was a Covid girlfriend proposal.

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Morgan: By that point, Shannon and I had been hooking up on and off for eight years. There was a feeling of, We might all die, the world might end, who knows what’s going to happen? We’d been interested in each other for so long, and now we lived closer to each other—Toronto was only an 80-minute flight from Chicago. We figured, If we’re going to be in a real relationship, it’s now or never. After we made it official, I didn’t get to see Shannon in person until nine months later, when I visited Toronto in December of 2020.

Shannon: Neither of us thought the pandemic would last as long as it did. But we kept our relationship alive long-distance. We were constantly on FaceTime, and we would both daydream about our future together—what our wedding would look like and what our children’s names would be. And we talked realistically about how to live together.

Morgan: Shannon loved her job in Toronto, and I didn’t care about mine in Chicago. Plus, things weren’t looking great in the US. We decided that I’d move to Toronto, which I did in May of 2022.

Shannon: I had my own place at the time, a one-bedroom apartment in the Annex. But it was small and had a curtain for a bedroom door. So a few months later, we moved again, to a bigger place at St. Clair and Spadina.

Morgan: I was pretty indifferent toward the idea of getting married until I met Shannon. She made me want to do it. Also, on the immigration side of things, getting married added a sense of security to me living in Canada. With all the political unrest happening in the US around same-sex couples, it felt like an honour to get married to a woman I love.

Shannon: I grew up in a very traditional Christian family, so I always envisioned myself in a white dress walking down the aisle. Even after I came out, and my family was unsupportive of me being gay and dating women, getting married was still something that stuck with me.

Morgan: Shannon and I started researching engagement rings in October of 2022, just a few months after I relocated to Toronto. We’d been together for over two years by that point, and it felt like the obvious next step. While we were on a trip to New York, we visited a jewellery designer I loved, and we both got our dream engagement rings designed together. We hadn’t decided who was going to propose to whom, so the jewellery company kept our designs on file. That way, whoever wanted to propose first could do it without the other person knowing.

Morgan: In November of 2022, my dad got into a motorcycle accident. He ended up in the hospital for a full year. It was a dark time. I spent all my free time and money flying to North Carolina to be with him.

Shannon: I was getting ready to propose to Morgan around this time—I’d ordered her ring in December of 2022. But I knew it wasn’t the time to do anything celebratory or fun, so I waited until the following May. I knew Morgan would be reluctant to spend money on a vacation since her dad was still in recovery, so I got my manager to write a fake brand-collaboration email offering me a free weekend at a cottage a few hours out of Toronto. It was my sneaky way to get Morgan to go on a trip. A few of our friends from out of town would join us there too. I snuck up to the cottage ahead of time with them to set up lights and a blanket. One friend stayed there with a camera to photograph the proposal. Then I drove back to the city to pick up Morgan.

Morgan: Shannon was acting strangely nervous and fidgety on the drive over. I figured something was up. Then, when we got to the cottage, I saw our friend with a camera. She did a terrible job at hiding.

Shannon: Morgan knew what was going on at this point. We went over to a spot I had picked out, and I popped the question. Then she told me, “I brought my ring for you too. Do you want me to get it?”

Morgan: I’d actually ordered Shannon’s ring and had been planning to propose that weekend too. So I ran back to the car, grabbed the ring and proposed right back to her.

Shannon: We wanted to get married in June of 2025. Once we hit the one-year anniversary of our engagement, in May of 2024, we figured it was time to get to work.

Morgan: Going back to the dream-wedding conversations we’d had during Covid, we decided we wanted it to feel like the friend trips we’d taken together: having everyone we really loved stay together in one place for a couple of days.

Shannon: We figured we’d Airbnb a big house somewhere, so that’s where we started. We wanted a place that felt like summer camp, where we could all hang out and where a lot of people could sleep over. There was one in LaFayette, in upstate New York, that checked all of our boxes. It was a beautiful property surrounded by apple orchards.

Morgan: Shannon is more of a go-with-the-flow person, while I have strong opinions about everything. So she was happy for me to take the lead on planning. I envisioned our wedding as elegant-garden-party-meets-summer-camp. I wanted people to be dressed up, and I wanted the decor to be bright and colourful. I knew our guests would gravitate toward darker colours, so we asked them to pick a colourful outfit to go with the theme. I wanted lots of bright florals too.

Shannon: Morgan and I shopped for our wedding outfits together. I knew I wanted to wear a white wedding dress, but I wanted something that wasn’t too extravagant. I ended up with a satin dress from Park and Fifth that was classic, simple and well-suited for my body type. It had spaghetti straps and a fitted bodice.

Morgan: I’m not a dress person, but I didn’t want to look like Ellen in a suit. My style is more feminine-androgynous, so finding any kind of formal wear is challenging. I stumbled across a designer located in the Philippines, Vania Romoff, who has a bridal line. I chose a top with puffy sleeves and a long train in the back, which I paired with pants.

Shannon: The Airbnb had a cap of 32 people. Sixteen of our closest friends would stay there, then the rest of our guests would stay at other Airbnbs or hotels close by.

Morgan: Back when we were planning during Covid, Shannon came across shirts that said, “Marriage is gay.” We knew we wanted them to be our wedding merch.

Shannon: They were such a hit. Every guest and vendor got one, and they wore theirs all weekend.

Morgan: The morning of the wedding, Shannon and I got ready together with our friends. It felt like everyone was just hanging out and getting dressed up for a party, which was exactly what we wanted. We got our friends to help out with things like assembling the floral arrangements and putting up lights.

Shannon: We didn’t actually decide where to have the ceremony until after we arrived. The forecast for the whole weekend was looking like terrible rain. Kelsey McEwen, the meteorologist from CTV’s Your Morning, is a colleague and friend of mine, and I had her keeping an eye on the weather for me. She kept texting me updates, and they were not good. We ended up renting a tent last-minute, and we even hired a witch on Etsy to cast a spell for good weather. And it worked! We didn’t have any rain at all, so we hosted the ceremony outside. Dinner would be in a tent next to the ceremony space with one big, long banquet table.

Morgan: The ceremony started around 5 p.m. My dad walked me and Shannon down the aisle. It was a big moment for us and a celebration of his recovery too, that he was well enough to do it.

Shannon: My dad passed away from cancer when I was nine, and the rest of my family are religious and weren’t supportive of my relationship, so they chose not to attend. Chosen family was a big theme of the wedding. There were some people from our original queer Tumblr group there, like our friend Teresa, who was also at the proposal; my friend Vanessa and her partner, Amy; and Dorothy, whom I met in Edmonton and became fast friends with—we even have matching tattoos. I felt grateful to have all of these people in my life.

Morgan: I was definitely nervous standing up in front of everyone. It was a moment 11 years in the making. We wrote our own vows, and to be able to say exactly how I feel about Shannon and let her know in front of everyone was really special.

Shannon: It was nerve-racking for me too. But our officiant—our friend Lydia—did such a charming and wonderful job. I was anxious about pouring my heart out in front of everyone. But it went so well, and I was excited to party afterward.

Morgan: Dinner was served family-style. The caterers came out with big plates of food, including roast chicken and beef. It was all so delicious, and the caterers were super sweet and used a lot of ingredients from the region. They mentioned that the asparagus we ate with dinner was grown at a farm that they could point to in the distance, as was the rhubarb in the pie we had for dessert.

Shannon: We had speeches during dinner, and they were very emotional, especially for me, since I didn’t have my family there. Our friends went out of their way to make sure we knew how much we were loved and how much they wanted to celebrate queer love.

Morgan: We originally planned for only a few people to speak, like my dad and sister, but friends kept coming up to us and saying that they had prepared a speech. They all got up there, and we all cried a lot.

Shannon: We didn’t have a DJ, but I made playlists for different parts of the day. When people were arriving to the wedding, we had classical versions of songs from movies that Morgan and I like. It was something that probably no one else would pick up on, but Morgan and I would know. The cocktail hour and dinner playlists had a lot of movie soundtracks, and then the after-dinner playlist was a lot of early 2000s pop hits and songs that would get everybody on the dance floor.

Morgan: Because the Airbnb was in the middle of nowhere, we had drivers come at 12:30 a.m. for the people who weren’t staying with us.

Shannon: We kept the dance party going, but we did so in the tent, so the house would be quiet for people who wanted to go to bed early—like Morgan.

Morgan: I probably went to bed around 1 a.m. That was very on-brand for us: Shannon and I are known to leave parties at different times—I’ll leave early and she’ll come home in an Uber a few hours later. At the end of the night, I felt so good about the day having gone smoothly. It added to the feeling that everything was meant to be. I’m such a logistics person, so a schedule going off right is like my love language. I loved my outfit too, and like a typical bride, I didn’t want to take it off.

Shannon: I made it to bed around 3 a.m. I felt great at the end of the night. It was overwhelming. I love being with people and being social, and having that while being celebrated with Morgan was just so special. I didn’t want it to end.

Morgan: The next day, everyone came back to the house and we had a big brunch. We accidentally bought way too much alcohol, and we couldn’t bring it all back over the border to Canada, so in the morning we gave everyone beers and champagne, and the party continued.

Shannon: Married life has been very easy and fun so far. It’s nice to call Morgan my wife. When you’re engaged, “fiancée” sounds like a gender-neutral term, so I had to keep finding ways to specify that my fiancée was a woman in conversation. I like saying “wife” now. It feels like it fits.

Morgan: It’s been fun for me to call Shannon my wife too. We’ve been saying that we’re each other’s wives for a long time already, but now it’s actually true, and it feels special and important. I don’t think we’ll ever lose that feeling.

Cheat Sheet

Date: June 14, 2025 Photography: Eunice Beck Videography: Lauren Ladouceur, Weddings With Laur Planner: Courtney Kahler, Crown Coordination Venue: The Blossom Retreat at Beak and Skiff Officiant: Lydia Smyth Florals: Willow Floral Studios Additional decor: She Rents Vintage, Pretty Little Vintage Co. Grazing table: She Fancy Food: Scratch Farmhouse Catering Company Ltd. Shannon’s outfit: Park and Fifth Morgan’s outfit: Vania Romoff Hair and makeup: Lateisha Grant, Miss T Beauty Weather witch: Crystal Conjure Magic, Etsy