"You look like a hobo. Do you want to dance?"

To this day, Nathan can’t believe these were the words that came out of his mouth the first time he set eyes on his bride to be, but it’s obvious from the tender smile of shared amusement that, for Nathan and Leila Simpson, they were the perfect introduction to romance. The couple did dance together that May evening in 2001, although it was to be three weeks before Nathan mustered up the courage to phone the number he had so boldly asked for prior to saying good night.

"My roommate picked up the call and said: It's Nathan for you," Lela recalls. “I said: Who?” For a split second, the faintest tinge of a blush colours her cheeks. “It took me a minute to remember who he was.”

Leila accepted Nathan’s invitation to lunch at a local Mexican Cantina followed by a stroll along White Rock’s famous beachfront promenade. But once again, weeks passed before Nathan saw Leila. “I was leaving on the weekend for a holiday in Europe,” Leila explains. When she returned, Nathan was waiting.

The pair soon discovered a mutual love of the outdoors. They backpacked, shared the magical splendor of storms at Tofino, surfed up and down the Pacific Coast, and could frequently be found pitching a tent on weekend camping trips.

In the summer of 2004, they returned to surf at Westport Beach, California, one of the first places they had vacationed together. It was a cold, rainy trip, and when Nathan suggested a drive to the beach Leila admits to being “difficult” about it. Eventually, however, she gave in. “Nathan kept saying over and over how much he loved me, but I really didn’t have a clue what was going to happen,” Leila says. As the sun touched the horizon, Nathan got down on his knee and proposed.

“I’d been to see her father to ask for Leila’s hand, I had the ring, and I was pretty sure she’d say yes, but I was so nervous I was shaking,” Nathan admits. In fact, most of their friends already knew he was planning to pop the question -- but they’d maintained a devoted, unbroken silence and it was a secret only from Leila. “Actually we’ve always suspected there were a few bets going on about whether she’d accept me or not,” Nathan says with a grin.

Leila did, indeed, accept. The couple laughed and cried and watched the sky turn from yellow to orange to red. They took pictures and held hands. Finally, they returned home to begin enjoying their yearlong engagement and to plan their celebration.

It was to be an elegantly simple event. Nathan had long dreamed of getting married in the sprawling Langley farmhouse where he grew up; Leila wanted a garden wedding filled with “blue skies and daisies.” It was a natural pairing.

While Nathan and his family set to work doing “a few” renovations his mom had in mind for the house, Leila began designing and creating the numerous handcrafted details that would reflect the fun-loving “Perfect Pair” theme of their wedding. “Even though I’d been involved in so many weddings when I was an event planner in Whistler, it wasn’t until I was doing it for the two of us that I began to understand the real significance of the day,” Leila says.

She admits if she’d realized the sheer time commitment to make not only most of the centrepieces, favours, and flower arrangements, but remembrance gifts and place settings for 100 guests, it would never have happened. “Leila was amazing,” Nathan says. “We had a room set up in my parents’ place that we called the War Room because Leila had everything so organized.”

“I was actually very lucky,” Leila says. “At the time I was working as a flight attendant, so I had long periods when I could do things like make place cards.” She also often enlisted help from an unusual source. “Sometimes on a long flight I’d get the passengers’ kids involved cutting out shapes or gluing pieces together. They absolutely loved it, and it was fun for me.”

July 23rd, 2005, dawned sunny and clear. As guests began arriving, groomsmen handled the parking and directed people to the front patio where the ceremony would take place. No one suspected the bride was anywhere other than inside the house.

Cued by Carla - Nathan’s sister and emcee for the day - at the appointed hour, a cavalcade of three vintage Impalas carrying a gaily waving bridal party began winding their way along the drive from where they had been hidden just out of sight. “We used a walkie talkie so we could time it perfectly to arrive just as the song ended,” Nathan says. It was only the first of the day’s many unique touches.

The couple were married between two enormous bouquets of flowers in a ceremony that epitomized the elegance of simplicity. Their vows spoke of being friends first and now best friends forever. As they signed the registry, two of Leila’s closest friends sang a duet in what became, for her, a highlight of the day. More than one guest was particularly appreciative of the tissues found in every welcoming gift bag - tissues marked: For Your Tears of Joy.

While the wedding party posed for photographs, guests were treated to pre-dinner sushi and cocktails. Both confirmed sushi aficionados, Leila says they had considered the delicacy cost prohibitive until serendipity intervened only a week before the wedding day. “Our sushi chef was a chef in training who agreed to prepare sushi for our guests right on the spot , "the only problem was everyone loved it so much Nathan and I only got a couple of pieces,” she says with a twinkle in her eye.

Rather than the traditional seating chart, as guests arrived for dinner under the poolside marquee, they were given a paper pear and requested to find “their perfect pair” place marker located, where else, under a ripe, juicy pear in front of each seat. On their tables, guests found a disposable camera, water jug with a peeled cucumber artistically interwoven with a shiny skewer, and a handmade paper cube. “The cube had our engagement photo on the top,” Leila says. “On either side was a picture of us as kids, on a third side was the dinner menu, and on the fourth was the timeline for the evening.”

By now, everyone was well into the participatory spirit of the evening so it was no surprise the couple chose an alternative to the traditional clinking glasses. “If people wanted us to kiss, they had to sing a song or recite a poem,” Nathan explains. “All through dinner, groups of people would be leaping up to sing - usually off-key.”

A definite hit was the uncle who took centre stage all on his own. “Let me count the ways I love you,” began his poem. “One, two, three, four, five.” Nathan and Leila still dissolve into laughter at the mere memory.

It was almost midnight before the celebration turned to dancing. Finally, against a backdrop of bubbling fountains and the congratulations of well-wishers, Nathan and Leila departed to a local B&B for their first night together as a married couple.

And there is an exciting sequel to their love story. Following the custom of grand adventure and thirst for discovery that’s part of every hobo’s innermost spirit, several months later Leila and Nathan shouldered their backpacks and spent a month trekking through Costa Rica. They surfed, visited friends, camped, and to their delight, returned home to learn that this summer, almost a year to the day after they said their vows, another Simpson will enter the world ready to carry on their family tradition of globetrotting and pure joi de vivre.