Festival of love

After their first date fizzled, Matthew and Jensen Logue-Lee just couldn’t stop running into each other. Here’s how a few meet cutes led to marriage

After matching on Tinder in September 2017, strategy consultant Matthew Logue went all out for his first date with film marketer Jensen Lee by getting front-row seats to a Maple Leafs game. After spending a few hours at the rink together, Matthew was keen to pursue something, but Jensen, fresh out of a long-term relationship, wasn’t so sure and passed on a second date.

Fate had other plans. First, they found themselves in the same line at a TIFF screening the following September. Then they bumped into each other at a Mumford & Sons concert in December 2018. So, they decided to attend the second Mumford & Sons show the following night — together.

Over the next few months, they started hanging out on purpose, including at the South by Southwest music festival in Austin — which, coincidentally, they both had tickets to already. Soon, friendship turned into something more. Shortly after the festival wrapped, they decided to make their relationship what Jensen calls “officially official” in April 2019. “I was a bit of a slow bowler,” he laughs. (“‘The Slow Bowler’ was his nickname,” Matthew adds.) The setting for this momentous occasion? Another Leafs game.

“Matthew is the most amazing human being,” Jensen says.

“He thinks about people. He does things for the people he loves. And that’s a value I really love in him. And he just makes me a better person. I know, it’s very cliché to say that, but he does.”

The bowler soon picked up speed, and Matthew left his King Street West condo to move to the Junction Triangle with Jensen in September 2019. Their thoughts turned to marriage, with their love of music playing a big role.

“We both had it on our minds that we might propose around South by Southwest,” Matthew says, but even though they made their second trip to Austin in March 2020, the festival was cancelled, and no one proposed.

Matthew had a plan, though: he rented out the Paradise Theatre in Bloorcourt Village for a private screening of one of Jensen’s favourite films, “Before Sunrise.” “When we first started talking,” Jensen says, “I mentioned to him that I thought the ‘Before’ trilogy perfectly encompasses the stages of love. To me, it’s one of the most romantic series ever made.”

Unfortunately, Matthew wasn’t feeling so great on the big day, so they weren’t able to go to the theatre. Instead, he enlisted the help of their 14-year-old pomchi, Maia. She donned a custom shirt that read “Can Tall Man be my tall daddy?” and was sent into the bedroom.

At first, Jensen had no idea what was going on. “I was in the middle of work and then had to rush out,” he says. “And then to see Maia walk into the bedroom with the shirt on, I was confused. I walked out into the living room and saw Matt on one knee. I didn’t put two and two together because everything was happening so quickly. Then I saw Matt crying and it clicked that he was proposing. It was really sweet.”

It was time for the couple to plan. “We debated spaces that were either really industrial, or spaces that were more farmlike, and those are more out of the city, obviously. Then we thought about Evergreen

Brick Works because it’s kind of both,” Matthew says. “And we love that Brick Works is doing amazing work in the community, and with sustainability.”

On Sept. 17, 2022, five years after meeting, they threw a big wedding, with 220 guests, including six groomsmen on Matthew’s side and five groomsmen and one groomswoman on Jensen’s. The procession featured eight assorted godsons, nephews and nieces — and Maia in a bow tie.

The couple walked down the aisle to musician Jeremie Albino performing Taylor Swift’s “Invisible String.” Albino’s been a mainstay in their relationship, as they hired him to perform a virtual concert for their friends for Jensen’s first lockdown birthday, and Matthew surprised Jensen with the very same cover of “Invisible String” as a Valentine’s Day gift. In keeping with their love of music, they also had an audio guest book from After the Tone, on which guests could record messages on an old-school phone which would then be pressed onto vinyl.

The nuptials honoured family in many ways. Matthew’s father sang while the grooms danced with their moms and one of Matthew’s best men played the guitar. Matthew’s dad also presented the grooms with aunique gift. “Before the ceremony, he gave us a special Scottish coin that traditionally you would give to a bride on their wedding,” Jensen says. Matthew’s aunt found the 16th-century coins, called bawbees, and crocheted them into little flowers so the men could hold them in their suit pockets for good luck and prosperity.

Jensen’s father passed away in 2008, but the pair included him as well with a monogram inside their suit jackets of “Logue” in cursive and “Lee” in Cantonese.

The pair look forward to a life together as a little clan of their own — even if it took them a minute to realize theirs was the right pairing. “When I say family and think of family, I think of Jensen and Maia,” Matthew says. “But you never know until you find that person.”