The perfect bouquet? Add parsley
Quirky but quaint nuptials for A-type actor and artist
The bride carried parsley in her bouquet, the groom wore some in his boutonniere.
And their guests each took a tiny pot of it home with them.
When A types get married — Claire Uhlick’s an artist, Ryan Parker’s an actor — you expect their wedding to be a little quirky, just like them.
Besides the parsley, there was the food truck that catered the reception, a friend dressed as a chicken leading the Bird Dance, and a flash mob that danced as the groomsmen sang Life’s A Happy Song from the Muppet Movie.
But there was also the sweet and the poignant: Claire wearing the shoes Ryan’s mom Lynn Parker wore at her wedding; Ryan serenading his new wife with At Last; Claire and her mom Antonia Huysman holding hands and crying before the ceremony and her mom giving her the “biggest hug ever. It’s a powerful memory,” Claire says, “since my mother passed away shortly after our wedding from a yearlong battle with cancer.”
Claire, 28, and Ryan, 33, got married last summer, five years after they took the same psychology course at Grant MacEwan University, then a college. He was the Smiley Guy who stared at her from across the lecture hall.
They both lived off Whyte Avenue so ran into each regularly at coffee shops, the grocery store, arts events, always exchanging smiles and nothing more.
Claire jokes that Ryan stalked her for five years.
She finally found out his name when they ran into each other at the Art Walk and she gave him her business card.
He introduced himself, and they went for coffee.
Eighteen months after moving in together, Ryan proposed Christmas Day 2012.
They pulled the wedding together in eight months, doing much of it themselves from the wedding invitations to the wedding cake and slide show shown at the reception.
Claire’s mom and sisters, Anna and Nicole, made hundreds of gluten-free cupcakes — Ryan can’t eat wheat — as well as mini cheesecakes and custard in little plastic wine glasses.
Over the course of a few weekends, they built a wedding arch out of 30 birch trees on Claire’s parents’ property. They moved it by flatbed truck to Ryan’s Nana and Papa’s (Connie and Bill Parker’s) farm near Ardrossan, which is also the tree farm for Salisbury Greenhouse, where they had the wedding.
Claire found her wedding dress at Urban Bride Delivered, a home-based shop that sells new and once-worn dresses. A birdcage veil, and Ryan’s mom’s thick-heeled pumps with square toes, completed her outfit.
The bridesmaids wore mint-coloured summer dresses Claire found for $39.99 at Simons in West Edmonton Mall. Claire and her mom made champagne-coloured satin sashes to complete each bridesmaid’s dress as well as the wedding gown.
Claire’s bridal bouquet included parsley and blueygreen hens and chicks from Ryan and Claire’s backyard. She explains that she’s loved parsley since she was a kid and ate handfuls of it from her parents’ garden.
Ryan’s charcoal grey suit came from the Hugo Boss store at WEM.
His groomsmen wore light grey rented suits from Black & Lee, and dark grey bow ties that matched the groom’s suit.
Ryan gave each of his attendants a 1980s point-andshoot camera with a roll of film to catch the wedding through their eyes. He did the same using his 1970s Hasselblad medium format camera.
He and Claire exchanged wedding vows overlooking fields of barley.
The Little Village Food Truck catered a Greek-food buffet at the reception at the Southwood Hall in Mill Woods. Guests later lined up at the truck for late-night Greek-style sandwiches.
There were so many fun and beautiful moments, the couple says it’s hard to pick the most memorable.
“I relive the day in my head all the time,” Claire says. “It was a perfect, magical day.”
Ryan, who is completing a starring role in Neil Simon’s Barefoot in the Park at Teatro La Quindicina, says “it was the happiest day of our lives … so far.”