42 avenueJANUARY.18
JODIE TILLEY
T
hough Jodie Tilley celebrated her first
wedding this past September, it was
not her first time facing a walk down
the aisle. A decade earlier, she and her
then-fiancé had planned a wedding,
only for the groom to get cold feet mere days
before the ceremony and call it off.
“It was one of the most tragic and devastat-
ing things that could happen to somebody. I was
in a bit of a fog, [feeling] shock and disbelief for
probably two weeks after that, when it all became
reality,” says Tilley. Sadness set in for a long time
afterwards until she realized this was her life and
she had to pick up the pieces.
Despite what she had been through, Tilley says
she still aspired to get married. What changed
after her first engagement was how much more
selective she was about choosing her partner.
Nearly a decade later, her high standards mani-
fested in her husband Ryan Pinder. The pair met
through mutual friends at a concert in the sum-
mer of 2014 and began dating soon after.
In spite of their strong chemistry, Tilley had
some reservations, as she had planned on having
children the following year, with or without a
partner. “About three months into our relation-
ship, I said, ‘We need to make a decision on
breaking up ... I don’t want you to get in the way
of my plans to become a parent,’” says Tilley.
“He stepped up to the plate, and said, ‘I’ve fallen
in love with you and I don’t want you to go on
this journey without me. I want to be the father
of your kids.’” Their twin boys, Blake and Cruz,
were born in September 2015, and the couple
were engaged a month later.
Tilley and Pinder wed in the fall of 2017 at
Eagle Ranch Resort in Invermere, a location that
allowed Tilley the Rocky Mountain wedding she’d
wanted the first time around. Unlike the first
time, however, this wouldn’t simply be a marriage
between two people, but a union binding their
whole family together, making it all the more spe-
cial. “We made [the twins] a very big part of this
wedding,” Tilley says. “They were the ring bearers
and they walked down the aisle and stood with us
on the podium at the gazebo, while everybody
else watched the four of us get married.”
The wedding theme was “shades of blue,”
with everyone but the bride dressed in various
hues meant to evoke the sea by Tilley’s child-
hood home in Brisbane, Australia. The theme
also served as a nod to the sapphire birthstone
of both Pinder and the twins, all of whom were
born in September.
That Tilley requested such a unique and
personal colour scheme in her guests’ wardrobe
demonstrated how her approach toward wed-
dings has evolved. “I felt much more confident in
what I wanted the experience to be like [this time]
and I cared less about what people thought,” she
says. “I knew what I wanted, knew what would
make my two boys and now-husband happy,
and I think 10 years ago I thought more about
what people would think.”“I KNEW WHAT
I WANTED, KNEW
WHAT WOULD MAKE
MY TWO BOYS AND
NOW-HUSBAND
HAPPY, AND I THINK
10 YEARS AGO
I THOUGHT MORE
ABOUT WHAT PEO-
PLE WOULD THINK.”
—JODIE TILLEYFamily photograph by Liz Bourassa; couple photograph by Andras Schram