Real Weddings: Emily and Nick

Emily Fenech, a 29-year-old product manager, met Nicholas Ashmore, a 28-year-old PhD student, at a bar in Kingston, Ontario, in 2019, while the two were studying at Queen’s University. Their shared love of The Lord of the Rings and similarly close-knit families (Fenech is especially tight with her grandparents) drew the two together. After Nick moved to Edinburgh in 2021 to start his PhD, Emily followed in 2022, and the couple is still based there. They were engaged in 2024, and an intimate 15-person wedding in Toronto followed in July of 2025, including a city hall ceremony, an impromptu photo shoot on the TTC and lunch at Maison Selby. Here’s how it all came together.

Nick: I first met Emily at Kingston’s equivalent of a dive bar, called Brooklyn, in March of 2019. She was with a mutual friend, so we got introduced that night. I didn’t get to talk to her much, but I was pretty smitten. I said to another friend, “I’m definitely gonna date that girl,” and he said something like, “There’s no way. You have no shot.”

Emily: When I met Nick, I could tell he was trying to hit on me. To be honest, I was attracted to him, but I wanted to convey that I wasn’t interested because I was at the end of my undergraduate degree and moving away in a couple of months, so I wasn’t looking for a relationship. I grew up in the Beaches and spent my whole life in the city, taking public transit everywhere, so I was excited to move back to Toronto.

Nick: The day after Emily and I met, I reached out through our mutual friend to get Emily’s phone number.

Emily: He texted me the next morning, so I agreed to go on a date with him. I’m glad that I did.

Nick: We met up for drinks at a bar and were there for almost four hours. We talked about where we grew up—I’m from London, Ontario—and our plans for after university. I was in my first year of a civil engineering master’s program, and Emily was finishing her undergrad in life sciences. We talked about movies—we both love The Lord of the Rings—and bonded over our love for bands like Arkells and Busty and the Bass. We closed down the bar.

Emily: The minute we started chatting, I realized how compatible we were. There was never an awkward pause in the conversation. We talked about our families: I’m the middle child of three, and Nick is the youngest of four, and I liked that family was really important to both of us. I’m really close with my grandparents, who helped raise me and my siblings and regularly attended our soccer games, graduations and dance recitals.

Nick: Emily and I moved pretty quickly after that. We saw each other every day in the first couple of weeks. In between her shifts at a student coffee shop, we went to concerts, got ice cream and went to the art museum on campus.

Emily: Since I’d be graduating in a few months and moving back home in May, I knew we would have to make a decision soon about whether to continue dating.

Nick: Early on, we had a really open line of communication. Neither of us held back because we knew that, if it was going to work, we’d have to navigate long-distance. In early May, we met up and had an intense conversation. I thought Emily was going to dump me, but she told me she wanted to make it work, which I was relieved about since I felt the same way.

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Emily: I moved back in with my mom in the Beaches in May of 2019, and Nick had another year and a half in Kingston. We continued to visit each other as much as we could. But he was moving around a lot for his program too. When Nick and I were in Toronto, we would almost exclusively take the TTC. Nick arguably loves the TTC more than I do.

Nick: I did internships in Waterloo and Austin, Texas. Then Covid hit. We did what we could to keep in touch. We were constantly on FaceTime together, and we did virtual date nights to watch Game of Thrones. At the end of 2020, I finished my master’s and moved back home to London.

Emily: I didn’t want to risk getting my grandparents sick, so we stuck close to our family bubbles. The longest stretch we went without seeing each other was six months. During the pandemic, I also got a puppy—a chocolate lab named Willa.

Nick: I was figuring out my next move and decided on a PhD at the University of Edinburgh, in the school of geosciences, which would start in August 2021.

Emily: Nick figured he could finish his PhD in four years since they don’t take as long in the UK, and we’d continue doing long-distance. But, after I visited him in November of 2021, I fell in love with the city. Edinburgh is really beautiful, and I immediately felt at home. I liked that it was on the smaller side, and everyone was so kind. I ended up moving there in July of 2022 with Willa, who quickly became our dog. It was a pretty intense time for our relationship since we took some big steps. I was moving in with a boyfriend for the first time—and across the world for him. But, looking back, it felt easy and right.

Nick: I always thought that marriage was something I wanted to do, but I just hadn’t met the right person yet.

Emily: I always wanted to get married too. Our feelings on marriage and the fact that we both want to have kids were things we discussed early in our relationship. So, after Nick and I moved in together, getting married felt like the right next step.

Nick: In 2023, we started to talk about what it might look like to get married and when we’d want to have a wedding, since we didn’t want it to interfere too much with my PhD.

Emily: Sometime in early 2024, I was at a networking event in Edinburgh, and I met someone with an engagement ring that I loved. It had an emerald in the middle with three baguette diamonds on either side. It was kind of a 1920s art deco design. I took a picture and sent it to Nick.

Nick: I took the hint and got a similar ring made for Emily. It was ready by March of 2024. It took me a few months to figure out the right time and place. In July, I planned a weekend away in Copenhagen and decided to pop the question in Edinburgh the night before. We often take Willa on walks up Blackford Hill, which has beautiful views over the city. So I set up a picnic blanket at the top of the hill and arranged for a friend to hide in the bushes to take photos of the proposal in secret. But, in the UK, the weather changes ridiculously fast. As we were walking over to the spot, it started pouring rain, and we had to stand underneath a tree for cover. By the time we got to the top of the hill, though, the storm had cleared and there were sunny skies for me to pop the question.

Emily: I was totally surprised by the proposal because I’d convinced myself that Nick wasn’t going to do it while he was still in school. It took a few months for us to get in the mindset of planning a wedding. We decided to do a wedding in Scotland with 80 guests in August of 2025, at a farm just outside of Edinburgh. But my grandparents are old—my grandpa turned 100 that summer, and my grandma was 96—and wouldn’t be able to travel to Scotland. So we planned an additional small ceremony in Toronto just for the family in July.

Nick: We didn’t want a huge event with 500 people—that doesn’t really feel like us. We’re not comfortable with all that attention. But we liked the idea of getting married at city hall.

Emily: I figured city hall would be a low-stress and easy ceremony as well as a good venue for our guest count, which was about 15 people. It was just our parents, our siblings, their kids and my grandparents, since our friends would be attending the Edinburgh wedding.

Nick: Originally, we were just going to do the legal ceremony at city hall, but we realized that we wanted to make it more special for Emily’s grandparents.

Emily: I wanted them to have a chance to put on their nicest clothes and get out of the house. They always nap in the afternoon, so we decided on a late-morning ceremony and a lunch reception to get them home in time for their naps. I have such fond memories of learning how to use a hammer in my grandpa’s workshop and gardening with my grandma every spring. I know that my time with my grandparents is limited and precious, and I was excited for them to see me get married. Nick and I might have considered staying engaged for a bit longer if my grandparents weren’t so old.

Nick: I have two nephews and Emily has one nephew, so doing a midday ceremony would work well for their naptimes too.

Emily: We decided on the Maison Selby for lunch. It’s an old house that they turned into a restaurant, and they do really great French food. They had a private room that was the perfect size for our group, and they were also able to turn the music down, which made it easier for my grandparents to hear what was going on.

Nick: For my suit, I wanted something colourful and celebratory with a little bit of pop. Emily’s ring is green, so I thought it would be nice to bring that colour into my outfit. I found an emerald-green linen suit with a relaxed fit online at Percival Menswear that was perfect for summer.

Emily: I get most of my clothes second-hand, so it didn’t feel right to buy something new. I bought my dress, a white ’90s dress with a corset top and a basque waist, from a Red Cross charity shop that specializes in bridal. My mom and grandma both had basque-waist wedding dresses, so that was sentimental for me.

Nick: Emily and I planned to be back in Toronto for three weeks. Our wedding day, July 3, would be sandwiched between Emily’s grandpa’s 100th birthday and her grandma’s birthday, so we could be in the city for all three events.

Emily: We spent the morning of the wedding at my mom’s house. Nick got ready a little bit beforehand, then he stayed downstairs while I got ready. My sister did my makeup and I did my own hair. When I walked down the stairs for a reveal, my mom and my sister cried. We got to city hall at 10 a.m., but our appointment time was 11 a.m., so we got a few photos done outside with our photographer, who is actually one of my co-workers from the student coffee shop at Queen’s.

Nick: Getting married didn’t feel scary at all. It was really relaxed and nice.

Emily: I was so grateful that all of my family could be there. Both my grandpa and my grandma were in the hospital just before the wedding, and it was touch-and-go with them at one point. But they got better in time, which I was so happy about.

Nick: When we were looking at how to get from city hall to Maison Selby, we figured we’d just hop on the TTC, which would take about 15 minutes.

Emily: It felt very Toronto to take the TTC—but it honestly just made the most sense. It felt like the thing to do when getting married at city hall.

Nick: At one point, my parents thought they’d join us, but we decided to have the subway ride be a moment for the two of us to decompress. We did end up bringing Paige, our photographer, to take some photos.

Emily: When we were going into Queen station, the ticket person saw us in our full wedding outfits, and I was still holding my bouquet, so she let us in for free, which was so nice.

Nick: People on the TTC were shaking our hands and saying congratulations, cheering and clapping. Some people were yelling at us from across the platform. They were all so genuinely excited for us. Some people even stopped to give us marriage advice, like to always be patient with each other.

Emily: I’m so glad we did that. I love riding transit when I’m back home, and those are my favourite photos from our wedding day.

Nick: We ordered from the regular lunch menu at Maison Selby so everyone could have what they wanted. They had buttered noodles for the toddlers, which was great. Most of the adults had steak frites or quiche. The food was phenomenal.

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Emily: Lunch lasted from about noon to 2 p.m. My mom and my sister coordinated some floral centrepieces and cookies that said “Just Married” as wedding favours. It was a surprise for us.

Nick: We asked my parents and sister to do short speeches at lunch. Emily’s grandpa also said a few words, which was really meaningful. After lunch was over, I was overjoyed and thankful that the day had gone exactly as planned.

Emily: I was content and a little euphoric. I didn’t have any expectations going into the day, but everything worked out so well. My sister got us a night at the Broadview Hotel as a wedding gift, so we checked in and had dinner on their rooftop patio, just the two of us.

Nick: We waited until the end of August to go on our honeymoon. We went to the Portuguese island of Madeira for a week.

Emily: I didn’t expect married life to feel different, but it does. It hasn’t been a big change in how we operate day-to-day, but it’s a nice feeling to be committed to the person I always want to be with.

Nick: There’s an amount of security and safety I feel now. It’s somehow more serious. And it’s nice being able to say, “My wife.”

Emily: We’re both turning 30 next year, so being able to call each other husband and wife feels right for the season of life we’re in now.

Cheat sheet

Date: July 3, 2025 Photographer: Paige Thompson Venue: Toronto City Hall wedding chambers Officiant: Virginia Ceni Lunch: Maison Selby Florals: Cool Green and Shady Cake: Bobbette and Belle Transportation: TTC Emily’s dress: Red Cross Bridal Boutique Nick’s outfit: Percival Menswear Guest favours: Charlotte Gorman, Cookies by Char