Film fans yell ‘action’ on a double-feature wedding

Monday, February 28, 2022 | By

In 2013, Teagan Chevrier met Tyrell Lisson on Facebook, where the two began chatting in a group for incoming first-year students to Brock University and noticed they had similar interests: both were film studies majors and enjoyed listening to Fall Out Boy and Bring Me the Horizon. They agreed to meet up during the second day of orientation week to wander around campus – and ended up spending the next eight hours together. “We had so much in common, it was spooky,” Chevrier, a film editor, says. “The time just flew by.”

Within a week and a half, they were officially an item.

At first, Lisson, a film producer, was drawn to Chevrier’s punk aesthetic. And he quickly realized her temperament perfectly complemented his. “She’s the yin to my yang,” he says. “I can get pretty wound up about things, and she’s there to ground me.” Chevrier felt like she had finally met someone she could talk to forever.

And they’ve been talking ever since. After six years of dating, Lisson decided to propose while in Hawaii on a vacation with Chevrier’s family. On the second day of the trip, while the rest of the family was watching hockey playoffs, Lisson suggested they take a stroll on Waikiki Beach. Choppy waves crashing onto the shore kept Lisson from getting down on one knee, but he clinched the “yes” regardless.

They chose 10/10/2020 as their wedding date because Chevrier liked the symmetry and selected The Elm Hurst Inn & Spa in her hometown of Ingersoll, Ont. as the venue because, she says, “we didn’t want to do something that was ‘modern city,’ but we also didn’t want to go full-on ‘wedding in a barn.’”

Due to pandemic restrictions, the Elm Hurst pushed their wedding into 2021, but rather than wait, the couple opted to keep the special date they’d already picked out. They cut down their guest list from 150 to 25 and hosted an outdoor wedding in Chevrier’s parents’ backyard. Chevrier sourced vintage mismatched glassware from flea markets and thrift shops to avoid drink mix-ups and served individual picnic baskets complete with a single serving of prosecco. Her Kleinfeld dress didn’t arrive in time, so Chevrier found a vintage 1970s wedding dress on Kijiji, which her grandmother altered into a two-piece set. Lisson wore an H&M suit he already owned, and the couple exchanged last-minute $70 rings from Mejuri. Though little went as planned, Chevrier says, “it turned into a perfect day with no stress because it was so low-key.”

The highlight of the ceremony involved handfasting, an ancient Celtic tradition in which a knot is tied around the couple’s hands to signify their intent to marry. (It also happens to be the origin of the phrase “tying the knot.”) Chevrier was drawn to the tradition because of her Scottish heritage and because she “liked the idea that if the situation isn’t perfect, you’re doing this for now with the understanding you will revisit it and make it official.”

On Oct. 30, 2021, a little more than a year later, the couple made it official, as their original invitees descended on the Elm Hurst. Their second wedding was almost a “carbon copy” of the first, says Lisson, with the same florist and photographer – only this time things went according to plan.

At the second wedding, they employed an innovative way for the guests to request the bride and groom kiss without clinking glasses: answering movie trivia. Chevrier, who wrote questions for each table thinking there wouldn’t be much interest, didn’t expect the competitive showdown. “Tables were fighting other tables to get the answers,” she says.

The wedding turned into an impromptu concert when groomsmen took turns playing songs by the Band and the Proclaimers. A friend wrote the couple a song as a wedding gift and performed it for the first dance – and had it pressed onto seven-inch vinyl so they could treasure it forever.

Now, the pair can cherish double the nuptial memories. “We’re so lucky we got to have two weddings,” Lisson says. “People continually make the joke, When are you going to have a third?”

By Isabel B. Slone, Special to the Toronto Star
Feb. 27, 2022

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