PUGWASH, N.S. — Jenna and Tim Ellis have a story to tell about their wedding.
Not only was it on the grounds of historic Thinker’s Lodge, but their ‘unofficial’ honeymoon was spent in the dark in the lodge during hurricane Dorian that hit the Pugwash area on Sept. 7.
“It was an exciting night for sure,” Jenna said on Sept. 8, just before leaving for the official honeymoon in Las Vegas. “We had the lodge booked for the weekend so we decided to stay the night. We had the family there and despite the hurricane we celebrated anyway. We sat in the big room and watched the storm in the big window.”
Even after the fierce winds and driving rain extinguished power to the building, and most of Nova Scotia, the family lit a fire in the fireplace and found artificial lighting and continued to celebrate while Dorian raged outside.
Ellis, who worked at Thinker’s Lodge as a student and saw several weddings there, was determined to hold her wedding there and wasn’t going to let a hurricane change her mind.
“It’s a very special place. I fell in love with it when I worked there,” she said. “I knew that was the place where I would be married.”
The wedding was originally scheduled to take place on Sept. 7 at the national historic site, known internationally as the home of the Pugwash peace movement and numerous conferences. However, with Dorian on the way, the decision was made to hold the wedding the evening before.
“We made the decision on Thursday to move the wedding. We got together with my parents on Wednesday night and decided to go ahead with it and make it work during the storm. I woke up Thursday and decided that it wouldn’t work,” she said. “We were planning to do it outside and I just didn’t think it would be a good idea to try to hold it Saturday.”
Ellis said neither she nor her husband could ask for more and are both so thankful to family, friends, the caterer, the band and the photographer for making it work on short notice.
Mother Nature also played a role as a beautiful ring around the sun appeared as the newly-weds were exchanging their vows just before sunset on the grounds by Pugwash Harbour.
“We definitely made the right decision moving it ahead by a day,” she said.
Despite the weather outside, she enjoyed every moment.
“It was a blast,” said Ellis, who works at the Springhill Institution while her husband operates his own portable welding business in Oxford.
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