NANAIMO -- Tiffany and Nick are set to celebrate their anniversary like they’ve never done before. A relationship that began at work.
“I knew he was from our department,” Tiffany recalls with a smile. “He was super cute!”
“She hit on me!” Nick laughs.
“I kind of put my hand on his shoulder,” Tiffany explains how she first walked over to where he was working. “And said, ‘Hey! You know you’re not supposed to sit here.’”
“That was her opener!” Nick laughs.
“Then he comes back with this super cute smile, ‘You know I’m allowed to sit here,’” Tiffany remembers him saying before laughing at her response. “‘I know I just wanted a reason to talk to you!’”
Talking turned to dating, which led to Nick planning a perfect proposal. It ended up failing so many times, he settled for Plan B.
“I just did it in the middle of the day!’ he says. “Randomly in the living room.”
“I turn around and there he is on his knee and I’m like [gasp]!” Tiffany says before laughing at the awkward timing. “I just came back from fishing! I’m in my boxers.”
“[Then] there was a lot of excitement,” Nick says. “It was really good!”
Tiffany smiles. “And I said yes.”
They decided to elope to Jamaica and spent their “wedding-moon” at a waterfront resort.
Although you’d think the wonderful memories would be too numerous to count, “I can tell you,” Nick says. “There were 382 photos on that SD card.”
Nick had brought just one SD card to alternate between taking photos on his camera and playing videogames on his portable player. On the way home, he forgot the player (with all their pictures) on the plane.
“He’s like, ‘Oh my gosh! I don’t have it,” Tiffany recalls him saying in the airport. “And I’m like, ‘Are you kidding me?!”
Although Nick raced back onto the plane to look for it and Tiffany spent weeks trying to track it down by phone, they came to the realization that it was gone, and accepted that they’d never see their wedding photos again.
“It was really heartbreaking,” Tiffany says, before smiling. “[Nick] likes to say he’s been in the doghouse for 13 years!”
Thirteen years of fading memories, until last month.
Somebody told Tiffany that pictures from their trip had been posted on Reddit.
“I was like, ‘Oh my gosh!’” Tiffany says when she first saw it.
“She came bursting into the room I was in,” Nick says.
“Honey! Honey! Look! Look!” Tiffany recalls saying while pointing her phone screen at Nick. “Our pictures were found!”
A man in Vancouver was looking for the couple after buying the videogame player on Craigslist and finding their wedding photos on the SD card inside.
Nick responded to the post with three ‘OMGs’ and received the SD card by priority post in time to celebrate their anniversary with pictures for the first time on Sunday.
“It was really cool reliving [the experience],” Tiffany smiles after seeing their younger selves smiling back at them.
“To be able to see them brought all the feelings back,” Nick says, flipping through pictures of them posing, kissing, and appreciating the setting. “It was a prettying wicked experience!”
And pretty wonderful to see that although their appearances had changed after 13 years together, their love had not only remained, it had deepened.
So Nick’s out of the doghouse?
“Oh yeah!” Tiffany says with a laugh. “He’s totally redeemed himself!”