They Met Working Christmas at the Mall. Years Later, They Married on Her Family Farm

Sukh and Shannen met in 2016 at the mall, where Shannen had been hired as seasonal staff for the holidays. Her job was in the Santa photo area. Sukh worked customer service in the office.

They rarely worked together, but they noticed each other enough that going to work started becoming a little more interesting.

“We became friends but didn’t really speak outside of work initially,” Sukh says. “But it came to a point where we were both excited to go to work when we knew each other was working.”

A few weeks in, Sukh finally made a move. He walked into the Santa hut and asked Shannen if she wanted a coffee.

She said no.

Not because she wasn’t interested. She was shy, caught off guard, and apparently not prepared for Sukh to actually do something about the crush their coworkers had already picked up on.

“Everyone teased us about how we’d make a great couple,” Shannen remembers.

Still, nothing happened. They added each other on social media, occasionally saw what the other was up to, and carried on with their lives.

Two years later, Sukh tried again.

Shannen was in India with her family when they started texting. The time difference made conversation difficult, but near the end of her trip, Sukh checked in again and asked if she wanted to go for dinner when she got home.

“I said yes,” Shannen recalls. “And as soon as I got home, we went out the very next day.”

This time, there was no awkward coffee rejection.

“There was no awkwardness, no silences,” Shannen says. “It was like we picked up right where we left off.”

They talked about their old coworkers, admitted they had both liked each other back in 2016, and by the end of the night, things felt pretty obvious.

“It’s cliché, but after that first date, we both just knew this was it,” Sukh says.

What Shannen came to love most about him was the steadiness she had already started noticing years earlier. “I love Sukh’s calming personality and his sense of humor. He’s very patient with everything, and I feel like those qualities balance out our relationship. I love that he feels like home.”

Family mattered just as much. Shannen comes from a big one and told Sukh early on that being close to them was important to her. He understood because he felt the same way. Over time, she watched him build his own relationships with her siblings and parents, whether he was spending time with her brother and sisters or sitting back and having a drink with her dad.

For Sukh, it was Shannen’s heart that stood out. “She is so caring about her family and everyone close to her. She’s always looking out for others and is so passionate about what she goes after, whether that’s personal relationships or professional targets.”

Early in their relationship, Sukh was living in Vancouver for school, which meant waiting for weekends to come home. “Every week, I would just be waiting for Friday so I could go back to my hometown and go on our dates,” he says.

Eventually, he started planning a much bigger date.

Shannen grew up on a farm and has always loved the countryside, so Sukh knew he wanted the proposal somewhere private and rustic. He found a local barn venue in Abbotsford that Shannen, despite living there her entire life, had never even heard of.

He booked her favourite photographer, Inder from Fox & Hound Photography, hired Event Vault for the setup, and somehow kept the whole thing secret, even from Shannen’s sisters.

Then Shannen learned just how far he had gone with the planning.

“He even made a Pinterest board to send to the decorator he hired, and I had just fallen in love so much more,” she says.

The barn was filled with flowers, photographs of the two of them and champagne. The detail that surprised her most was that Sukh had planned all of it himself.

“When he told me that he did it all by himself with no help, I was stunned. He had kept this a secret from everyone and was planning everything himself.”

After she said yes, Sukh suggested they keep the engagement to themselves for the weekend. They had spent years getting to this point, and for a couple of days, they wanted to enjoy it before everyone else joined in.

Then the spreadsheets began.

Sukh and Shannen approached wedding planning very much as a team. They had similar ideas for how they wanted the week to feel, while Sukh brought enough organization to create an Excel sheet tracking vendors, meetings, payments and timelines.

Their priorities were photography, videography, and hair and makeup, so those were booked first.

Jiyo Weddings, led by Jagjot Bhatti, became one of the teams Shannen and Sukh grew especially close to. What mattered to them wasn’t only the final photographs. It was how comfortable Jagjot and his team made everyone feel throughout the week.

“Jagjot and his team made us feel comfortable in front of the camera, and we honestly had so much fun working with them, not only us but our families too,” Shannen says.

She had saved specific poses and references for each event, and the team was happy to work through them with her while still making sure she wasn’t spending the entire wedding thinking about photographs.

“They also have a great way of making you feel present in the moment and soaking it all in, which is so important.”

Sukh noticed the same thing. “They provided direction during the events and are true professionals. Their passion for photography shows in the way they care so much about every moment.”

Made in Heaven documented the week on video, another team the couple became close with along the way. “From our first meeting, we knew they genuinely cared about us and the couples they work with,” Shannen says. By the wedding, the relationship felt much less transactional than it had at the beginning.

Shannen also worked with Vanessa of ArtistryByV, Sohal of BlueRose Artistry and Manit of Emkay.Artistry throughout the week, trusting each artist without doing trials beforehand. She liked that each brought something different, so every day still felt distinct.

But the biggest decision about the wedding had very little to do with vendors.

Shannen’s family has a farm in Abbotsford, with a large shop her dad had built on the property. When her parents suggested using it for the pre-wedding events and ceremony, Shannen and Sukh never really considered anywhere else.

“All of my pre-events and our wedding were held on my family’s farm,” she says. “We have a shop that my dad built, and it just felt like the right place.”

Over the course of the week, that same shop kept becoming something entirely different. Shannen worked with Sevreen of SK Events to make sure guests didn’t feel as though they were walking into the same room every day. By the wedding morning, the space she had known for years had become their ceremony venue.

And because she was getting married at home, Shannen got to experience something most brides miss entirely.

Her bedroom overlooked the front entrance of the house.

“Since the wedding was at home, I wanted the milni and barat to arrive at the front of my house,” she says. “My bedroom faces the front entrance, and I was peeking through my window the entire time.”

From upstairs, she watched Sukh arrive in the jeep. She watched his family and friends dance their way up the driveway. She even watched the entire milni.

“Typically, brides don’t get to see this, you usually just see a photo of the groom that someone took for you,” she says. “But I got to see Sukh pull up in the jeep and walk up the driveway with everyone cheering, dancing, and celebrating their way up.”

Sukh, meanwhile, was apparently looking toward the window hoping to catch her watching.

By the time it was Shannen’s turn to walk out, she felt surprisingly calm. “I wasn’t nervous on the wedding day at all. I walked so fast to the ceremony because I wasn’t anxious, it just felt so natural being at home. I woke up, got ready, and stepped outside to get married. It was perfect.”

For Sukh, the moment that stayed with him came shortly after.

“When she came and sat down next to me after her walk in, there were no words for that moment,” he says.

There were plenty of louder memories throughout the week too. Sukh’s Mehndi, which was supposed to be small and low-key, ended up going late into the night once everyone started celebrating. Shannen and Sukh had spent months planning each event, but some of their favourite memories came from the moments nobody could have scheduled.

That’s also the advice they give now.

“Enjoy every single moment,” Shannen says. “Don’t let the little things get to you or take over your week. You’ve been planning this for so long, and it’ll be over in a flash, so just soak it all in and cherish everything.”

Sukh agrees. “Things are going to go wrong, and not everything will happen exactly as you planned. Just roll with it.”

It took them two years after the Santa hut to finally go on a date, and years more to get to the family farm where they were married.

Looking back, Shannen probably could have just accepted the coffee.