Ashleigh, 33 and Matt, 32, met at a fancy dress party in Vancouver. They live in London with their son and three-legged cat
Matt had been living in Vancouver for a year when he was invited to a student fancy dress party in the spring of 2014. “I’d moved to study for a master’s degree in entomology,” he says. “Coming from Ohio, it was the biggest city I’d ever lived in. I’d never even ridden a city bus before.” The event had a lumberjack theme, popular at Canadian house parties at the time. “Everyone had to dress up in plaid and overalls, and there was a giant wooden Jenga game. You had to wear a hard hat to play,” he says. When he spotted Ashleigh across the room, he couldn’t resist going to say hello. “I thought she looked just like Kate Bush. I’d recently discovered her music, so I went to speak to her.”
Ashleigh had moved to Vancouver from Toronto to be with her boyfriend, but it wasn’t working out. “I had a job in a museum, but was living in a cockroach-filled apartment and had no friends. I wanted to meet new people,” she says, and an acquaintance invited her to the party. When Matt approached, she was busy trying to negotiate the party playlist with another guest. “I used to have a student radio show and was really into music,” she says. They talked for a while before Matt got the courage to tell her she looked like Kate Bush. “People have actually said that about me before,” she says.
