A few short weeks ago, in Sidney, British Columbia, Ambur wed Kwame at a family home on the water. “It was freezing cold…but it didn’t rain,” Ambur said last week when we were discussing the evening. She kept most of the details a secret from her guests who were welcomed by cocktails and a jazz trio who stuck to upbeat music to literally warm up the crowd “We could hear them across the bay where we were doing pictures beforehand” she said. This was a wedding that wasn’t planned around a single theme, colour or era but took on a look and feel of it’s own.

A professional soprano, Ambur who is no stranger to creating a moving scene, used dark purple dahlias and paper poms with splashes of pale pink, white and lime green to suit the garden setting. She went for a “deep contrast and wanted a big dark bouquet because it’s an unusual colour [for a wedding] and because those colours suited us.” Ambur also wore a necklace of cut glass from Stella & Dot to accessorize her Farley Chatto gown.

Although the flowers were important (Ambur did them herself by clustering stems of dahlias she bought at the local flower market in silver bowls), it was the food that was the centrepiece. From a watermelon salad to 4 ounces each of halibut, flank steak and lobster tail to a gorgeous risotto, the meal was a huge hit, created by family friend and restaurateur and served family style at tables dressed entirely in white, save for the flowers.

It was also a fitting coincidence that the deep red of the wine fit perfectly with the chosen colour scheme – wine became another theme for the day, Ambur’s father toasted the couple with a bottle of 1978 Dom Perignon and the guest book were a pair of bottles smuggled in from the Sonoma Vinyard that the couple hopes will be shared at a party in a year’s time by the same people who signed them.

Throughout the night, guests, half of whom are performers themselves, were continually entertained by a selection of carefully chosen entertainment – an accordion player and an impersonator took the party into the night and a friend sabred a bottle of champagne to get the festivities started. And, instead of moving directly from ceremony to dinner, Ambur and Kwame launched the dancing early by switching from jazz to an Ipod of mixed dance music. Their official dances were also carefully selected and Ambur took advantage of her talented friends, prevailing on five girlfriends to sing Can’t Take My Eyes off of You for the first dance, which, much to the couple’s surprise, all the guests joined in at the chorus.

All in all, the wedding was highly personal for the couple, from the colour choices to the menu, as Ambur said, “I knew I didn’t want traditional … but something entirely comfortable.”

Photography: Hélène Cyr