The night began like so many others. Ryan arrived first, climbing the stairs to Vinyl, a 2nd-floor club overlooking the streets of downtown Edmonton. He made his way to the dance floor waiting for his usual crew to arrive.

From the street below, Mackenzie could hear the muffled music and watched as the neon lights bled through the windows above. She had tagged along with a couple of new friends for the evening who had let her know they were meeting someone there. As they climbed the stairs towards the music Mackenzie's new friends reassured her that this guy was cool, and not to worry if he didn't give her a real name. After all, they weren't 100% sure they knew it themselves. Oh great... Mackenzie thought, so he's a drug dealer.

As they crossed the crowded room Ryan made note of his friends but paused when he caught sight of the beautiful woman walking with them.

"This is Mackenzie", one of them said to him. Mackenzie politely extended her hand, "Hi, I'm Mackenzie". Ryan reached out smiling, "Hey, I'm Ryan". There aren't many moments in life where the world goes quiet and seems to freeze in place, but that was one of them.

After a long night of dancing and laughter, Mackenzie learned that Ryan was not actually a drug dealer, he just had a couple of different nicknames.

We would love to say the rest was history, but it is rare for a modern love story to be so perfectly packaged.

It seemed that Mackenzie's subtle flirting went right over Ryan's head. He thought she was just being nice since he figured he would never stand a chance with a woman like her. Meanwhile, Mackenzie figured he must not be interested and instead, they became friends.

They ran in similar circles for the next year until Ryan moved away and they lost touch.

A few months later Ryan was asked to remove Mackenzie as a friend off Facebook (apparently, some people thought they got along a little too well!). Thinking it must've been a mistake, Mackenzie sent Ryan a friend request.

2 years later, on October 13th, 2014 at 9:18 pm Ryan saw Mackenzie's friend request sitting there and hit accept. Almost instantly he received a message "It's about damn time".

Ryan told Mackenzie he had moved back to the city and they began catching up. Thankfully, Ryan caught on this time and eventually, those long talks became hangouts, hangouts became dates, and dates became love.

Over the next few years, Mackenzie and Ryan went to post-secondary, made the move to Vancouver Island and both took on new and exciting jobs. Then in July of 2021, after a short hike up to Bannon Creek Falls, on top of a waterfall, Ryan got down on one knee and proposed. The moment was filled with joy and champagne and on the drive back Mackenzie looked at the ring, then looked at Ryan and laughed as she said "It's about damn time".

Registry