Bernadette DeSantis suspected her then-fiance Jim Macdonald thought she was about to break up with him when they went for lunch for his birthday in spring 2007. They’d had an argument, and the relationship was feeling like it was at a crossroads. But, at one point during lunch, DeSantis looked at Macdonald and said, “You should marry me.”
It was a tongue-in-cheek exhortation, says DeSantis. But, the next thing they knew, they were looking for a home together and planning their wedding.
DeSantis, then 41, and Macdonald, then 51, were in no rush to the altar. Both had been married before, both were divorced, and each had their own house and children – DeSantis had three; Macdonald, two. They’d been engaged for several years, and were hesitant to marry, all too aware of the effect it could have on their children if things didn’t work out.
But that birthday lunch set something in motion. “It all just seemed to be falling into place,” recalls DeSantis. Planning her second wedding – to take place in just a few weeks in the Okanagan – was just one of a whirlwind of tasks DeSantis had to accomplish that summer. She and Macdonald were now selling two homes while both working full-time. On her lunch hour one day, DeSantis walked to Donovan’s on 109th Street (which has since closed) and found the perfect wedding dress: “A champagne-coloured, very low-cut halter-top dress with a Marilyn Monroe-type skirt,” says DeSantis. “There was a pair of earrings in the case and I said, ‘I’ll take those, too.'”
“It was terrifically rushed,” says DeSantis. In fact, the deal on her previous home closed the day before they left on their vacation – after a bidding war.
It was a far cry from the first time DeSantis tied the knot, in a traditional Italian wedding in Toronto in 1994. Her whole family was involved in a year of planning the wedding for 170 guests, buying her big Cinderella dress and finalizing the lavish menu, which included 25 kinds of dessert. DeSantis says there were many expectations about what the wedding was going to be like, especially considering her parents were paying for it.