Justus Parmar, 36, and Elisia Friedman, 32.Supplied
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Who: Justus Parmar, 36, venture capitalist; Elisia Friedman, 32, beauty executive
Location: Vancouver
Together since: 2015
Setting the bar
Elisia: About six years ago, I was at a hotel lobby bar with a girlfriend and a guy sent over drinks – I think it was Champagne. Eventually he came over to talk to us. I remember thinking he was pretty interesting, but I don’t know what we talked about.
Justus: I don’t remember either. I had had a few drinks before I approached them.
Elisia: It was two years later that I get a message from this guy on Instagram asking, how has your summer been? And then he asked if I wanted to go for drinks. I was like, wait – is this that guy from the hotel bar?
Justus: I was recently single. I had a friend in town from Toronto and he was like “hey, bro, call some girls.” I didn’t know any! And then I remembered Elisia.
Match: She has three kids. He has three kids. Cue the Brady Bunch jokes
Match: A country music festival set the stage for this romance
Match: This gallery owner tried to sell an artist his own painting, then they fell in love
The perfect plan
Justus: I pretty much knew Elisia was the person I wanted to marry from the first time we went out. When it was time to propose, I wanted to do something special. I was going on a trip to London for work and a friend of mine suggested I should do it on the London Eye.
Elisia: I guess we had talked about getting married, but I definitely wasn’t expecting anything in the immediate future. I remember Justus told me he had gotten us tickets for the VIP experience on the Eye and I said sure – sounds like fun.
Justus: I hired an event planner to help with the details. I didn’t want to take any chances.
Proposal actually
Justus: We got on and there were only six other people in the capsule with us. She thought they were just random tourists, but really they were plants: a photographer, a musician …
Elisia: I remember seeing this guy had his guitar and thinking, “oh, that’s nice, maybe he’ll play us a song.”
Justus: I had organized T-shirts that said “Will You Marry Me Elisia?” so everyone had those on under whatever else they were wearing. Our favourite song is Perfect by Ed Sheeran, so when we got to the very top, the musician started playing that.
Elisia: And still, I was totally clueless – probably too busy taking selfies. When I heard the song, I thought, “oh we love this song,” and then I turn and there’s Justus on one knee. And then everyone is wearing these T-shirts. It took me a second to process. It was the most amazing thing – like in the movie Love Actually. I almost died of shock. Oh, and then I said yes.
Editor’s note: (Sept. 5, 2019) Justus Parmar's surname has been corrected in the online version of this story.
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