On Alexandria Angco’s 28th birthday in September 2022, she declared that she will not date anyone for a whole year. Dating wasn’t going so well for her and she wanted to focus on herself.
Twelve days later, he met Christian Chai Chua in person for the first time. And five months later, they were engaged.
“I failed,” she said of her goal. But in the end, this turned out to be a good thing.
The two first met on Zoom in August 2020 at an annual conference hosted by Singles for Christ, a group for young Catholic adults.
Ms Angco, who is from Toronto and goes by Ali, and Mr Chua, who is from Vancouver, British Columbia, who goes by Ian, saw each other again at subsequent virtual events hosted by the group, though no one thought much of the other. In September 2022, the organization held an in-person conference in Vancouver, its first since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. Ms Angco, 29, flew in for the event.
At the conference, Mr Chua, also 29, attended a personal development workshop in which Ms Angco was the facilitator. “The workshop went so well,” said Mr Chua. “I was so impressed. I was like, this girl is funny and she’s smart.”
During a Sunday Mass on the last day of the conference, Mr. Chua sat next to her at the parish of St. Francis de Sales in Burnaby, a town near Vancouver. “Wow, this girl is beautiful,” he recalled thinking.
He invited a group of friends from the conference to look at the stars nearby that night. Throughout the night, Ms Angco tried to be a wing woman for a friend who had fallen in love with Mr Chua. But she accidentally charmed him. Her jokes made him laugh so hard that his friends warned him to be quiet to avoid complaints from the neighbors.
The next morning, he called her and asked her out.
“For some reason, I immediately said, ‘Yeah, let’s go,'” he said.
She called her crush, who encouraged her to go on the date and said there were no hard feelings.
That night, Mr. Chua packed a blanket, a bag of chips and hot chocolate in his car. He picked her up and the two went stargazing at Porteau Cove Provincial Park. It was pitch black, and they sat in the dark for three hours talking about their upbringing, their families, and their dreams. “My brain was so busy,” Ms Angco said.
In an effort to get to know other people and better understand what they love about themselves, Mr. Chua wants to ask one question in particular: “Why is it worth knowing?”
I was, what a good question, Mrs. Ango thought. “I have never written about it in my diary.”
Her flight to Toronto was at 5pm the next day, but they made time for a second date at the Vancouver Art Gallery. After thinking about the question he had asked her the day before, he brought it up again. This excited Mr. Chua.
“It’s such a special question because to know someone knows their value and worth — it just means the world to me,” she said. After he returned to Toronto, they stayed in touch and spoke on FaceTime almost every day.
That November, before a Singles for Christ retreat in Holtwood, Pa., they made it official. During Sunday Mass, she whispered to him, “I’m ready to be your girl.” And he whispered inquiringly, “So, do you want to be my girlfriend?”
Ms. Angco is a senior product designer at Shopify, an e-commerce company. He graduated from the University of Toronto with a degree in neurobiology. Mr. Chua is a doorman and bellman at the Sheraton Vancouver Wall Center. He received a diploma in tourism from the Canadian Tourism College.
In February 2023, Mr Chua proposed to Ms Angco on a gondola at Mount Habrich in Squamish, British Columbia. On January 6, they were married at the Cathedral of the Holy Rosary in Vancouver, in front of 115 guests. officiated by Rev. Pablo Santa Maria.
The Filipino couple incorporated the coin, veil and cord tradition into their ceremony, where they exchanged coins as a symbol of their commitment to each other and their community. A veil was draped over their shoulders and a cord was wrapped around them to symbolize their union.
The reception, held at the Brass Fish Tavern, featured a kiss bingo game. Mrs Angco had printed out giant bingo cards filled with tasks for guests to complete to get the couple to kiss.
“It was just laughter all around,” Ms Angco said.