The love story behind a dinosaur holding a bouquet caught on camera at Victoria International Airport

Langford, B.C. -

While waiting at the arrivals lounge at the Victoria International Airport, Sophie was having second thoughts about dressing up in an inflatable dinosaur costume.

“I had to call my friend for a pep talk,” Sophie says, recalling the anxiety.

“It was like, ‘Oh man! These people (waiting around me) are going to think I’m strange.”

Emotionally, she felt like a Tyrannosaurus wreck.

“And then it was just like, ‘Who’s going to see this?’” Sophie recalls thinking to herself.

“‘Who’s going to know it’s me? Nobody!’”

Sophie didn’t realize she was being filmed by one of the people sitting across from her.

She was too focused on greeting her partner David, who’d spent the past few months in basic military training halfway across the country. It was their first time apart.

“It was really hard being on my own,” Sophie says. “And just hearing how rough it was for him.”

So, Sophie decided their reunion should be filled with fun.

But although the song begins with “I’ll be home for Christmas,” it doesn’t continue with “plan to be a T-Rex to greet me.”

David was looking for his partner’s purple hair, instead.

“I kind of got disappointed, to be honest,” David says, recalling how he searched around the arrivals lounge.

“She said she was here, but I couldn’t find her.”

Then, David turned around and saw the T-Rex, holding a bouquet of flowers.

“Holy crow!” he remembers thinking. “There’s a dinosaur over there!”

And when David realized the T-Rex was opening her little arms towards him, he couldn’t have run fast enough to give her a big embrace.

“It was unreal,” he says thoughtfully, before breaking into laughter.

“It was unreal hugging a dinosaur.”

David was “Home for Christmas” and it wasn’t a dream. Sophie took off the suit to feel their “love light gleam.”

“That’s my person! He’s back!” She remembers thinking through happy tears.

“It was easily the best hug I’ve ever gotten in my life!”

And thanks to the moment being caught on camera, Sophie and David are filled with gratitude that the memory of their Jurassic joy will never go extinct.