After bringing a budding teenage romance to marital bliss, the No. 11 Cadboro Bay bus will always be magic for Chelsea McMenamie and Brendan Morgan.
Chelsea, 24, and Brendan, 23, were married on Saturday. When it came time to get to the reception at the Royal Victoria Yacht Club, they boarded the No. 11 B.C. Transit bus at Cadboro Bay and Sinclair roads.
It is a special bus and a special bus stop for the couple.
Chelsea and Brendan grew up in Cadboro Bay and began dating before they were 15. Back then, the only way for them to see a movie, meet with friends or go for a walk outside the neighbourhood was by taking the No. 11 bus.
“Now, every time we ride the bus through Cadboro Bay it feels special to us, like we are teenagers again,” Chelsea said.
So Brendan (the acknowledged romantic one) suggested they ride the No. 11 from their wedding ceremony to the reception.
Originally, he wanted to get married at the church — St. George’s Anglican — where they first met in Sunday school at age 10. But that church was unavailable so the couple opted for wedding photographs at nearby Gyro Beach in Cadboro Bay, before heading to the reception via the No. 11.
“It didn’t work out for the first church, but I really wanted to keep that bus idea because it’s really sentimental and means a lot to us,” Brendan said.
The couple took their vows at Christ Church Cathedral. It’s the church where Chelsea’s father, Rev. Logan McMenamie, is priest and Dean of Columbia. McMenamie moved on from St. George’s, where he was also priest during the time when Chelsea and Brendan were in Sunday school and the early days of their relationship.
Chelsea says her parents “were not that excited about us dating at such a young age.” And her father was always fairly strict about the time to be home.
“It was, ‘You have to be on that bus by 9:30,’ every time we wanted to go out on a date,” Chelsea said.
McMenamie did not marry the couple. Instead, he was allowed to simply be “the dad,” said Chelsea, and give his daughter away at the ceremony.
Chelsea and Brendan have no immediate plans for a family of their own, but say that living in Cadboro Bay again one day would definitely be nice. They live in Oak Bay now.
Brendan recently graduated from engineering at the University of Victoria and begins his first “grown-up job” next month. Chelsea has just finished a family support program at Camosun College and is looking for work in education.
“We’ll see where life takes us,” Chelsea said.
