A Stunning Rocky Mountain Wedding in Lake Louise, Alberta

About the couple

Bride: Catherine Wilson

Groom: David Wilson

How they met: “Apparently, according to Dave, the first time we met was at the first Trinity Western University outdoor club meeting of the year but I don’t remember meeting him until the first outdoor club rafting trip,” explains Catherine. “I was helping my future sister-in-law run the trip and noticed when all of the guys were piling into one car and all of the girls into another. You see, if people don’t mix at the beginning, it just won’t happen on the trip. So I asked this random guy to ride in my car, with me and three other girls. Dave tells me he tried everything not to get put in my car because he thought it would be the most boring eight-hour drive ever. Yet, in the first 20 minutes, the girls in the back fell asleep, leaving me and Dave to our lively conversation for the next seven hours. Dave says I am the first girl he ever liked just by talking to me.”

Engagement story: “After dating for three and a half years, I was starting to wonder if anything was going to happen and we had talked about it vaguely a couple times, but Dave gave me no hints of what he was thinking,” Catherine recalls. “In May 2010, Dave went on a travel study as a teacher’s assistant to Hawaii. While he was gone, I went to visit my sister in Tibet. On the way back, I planned to stop in Kauai for 10 days to hang out after the travel study with Dave and his parents. It was 10 days of paradise, but eventually the last evening rolled around. Dave had planned a date for us and tried to rent a car, but despite being 21 & 22 years old, we ended up being driven to our date by his parents. The sun sets beautifully in Hanalei Bay and we were worried we would miss it if we went to dinner right away, so Dave suggested we go to the beach and hang out. Halfway down the beach, he pulled out of his backpack some very weird items; his bedsheet, an empty wine bottle, a random cork, two pens, and pages that he ripped out of my journal. Then he pulled me close and looked in my eyes and told me that he thought it would be fun to write down as many things as we could think of that we loved about each other, then put them together in the empty wine bottle, cork it up, throw it in the ocean. It sounded great to me. No suspicion even crossed my mind that it was a little over the top. Then, he just kept writing winner after winner of encouraging words and I was working hard to keep up. We filled the bottle up pretty good just as the sun was about to set. We squished the cork in and he told me to pose like I was about to throw it in the ocean so he could get a picture. So, I’m posing, with my back to him, and he was taking forever to take the picture. Finally I heard the click and then he said he wanted to take another one, so there I was left in that pose for a little longer. Finally, I lost patience and turned around and there he was on one knee with a ring box. He popped the age old question, and I didn’t even answer, I just tackled him with a big hug. We tipped over in the sand, laughing, and then freaked out because we didn’t want the ring to fall in the sand. Then he blurted, ‘So, what’s your answer?’ which my reply was of course, ‘YES!’”