Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/127001
n Love doesn't happen in an instant — sometimes it can take years. Just ask Kerry Bhangu, who first met Jason Sandher in 2000 through a mutual friend. Both were dating other people at the time, and Jason, who plays on the Canada Cricket Team, travelled frequently. But the two somehow managed to talk together on the phone — a lot. "I was focused on university and Jason was focused on cricket," Kerry recalls. "But for those four years before we started dating in 2004, I always had Jason on my mind. I always knew I liked him." Kerry and Jason, both 30 and Punjabi, had grown up in Burnaby in families that they consider fairly liberal. In 2004, when he returned to Vancouver from a cricket tour, Jason called Kerry and asked her to be his girlfriend. It felt natural to say yes, Kerry remembers. "We dated for eight years," she says, noting that doing so is uncommon in traditional Indian relationships. "But I supported Jason with what he wanted to do, and he supported me. It was important to both of us that we make ourselves happy as individuals, before we got married." When he's not batting for Canada, Jason is a registered massage therapist in Richmond, while Kerry works as a producer for ad agency Rethink. Both knew their relationship was serious, but never actually discussed marriage. Until December 2011, that is. That's when Jason drove Kerry up to Whistler, hired a couple of snowmobiles and a private guide and took her out on the mountain, an engagement ring secretly nestled in his pocket. "I'd planned it really carefully, but at the time Kerry was getting over a bad flu and didn't want to go," he says. For her part, Kerry remembers finding the snowmobile trip scary. "We'd never done this before and I couldn't figure out why he'd hired a private tour guide to take us out," she says. When they reached the top of the mountain, and Jason proposed, the penny dropped and the future began to take shape in her mind. "We were settled in our professions, and marriage just seemed like the next natural step," she says. With eight months of planning ahead of her, Kerry knew precisely what she wanted for her big day. "I'd kept mental notes over the years, a blue board in my head," she says. It helped that she and her parents had a trip to India planned for January 2012, and she knew she could use some of that time to have her outfits customized in New Delhi. Drawing her inspiration from British designer Matthew Williamson, whose bohemian style she admires, Kerry chose realweddings.ca p52-55_Kerry+Jason.indd 53 53 13-04-22 11:10 AM