Bride and Groom Recreate Wedding at Hospital Where They Work and First Met: ‘It’s a Big Piece of Our Story’

A Canadian couple said “I do” — all over again — in the very spot where their love story began.

Elizabeth Dunphy and Will Goessaert first met on the job at the Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital in Toronto, so they decided to honor the place that’s become so meaningful to them as a couple by recreating their wedding there.

After celebrating their official nuptials on May 4, the newlyweds did a repeat performance just days later with their colleagues at the hospital, which specializes in caring for children with disabilities or needing rehabilitation after illness or trauma.

“On May 10, we put on our wedding attire and recreated our first moments together at Holland Bloorview,” Goessaert, 33, tells PEOPLE.

“Our wedding venue is the place where we got married, but Holland Bloorview is where we met and fell in love. It is a big piece of our story and it was important to us to include it in our celebration,” adds Dunphy, 37.

The pair first struck up a friendship when Dunphy began working at the hospital in May 2019 and later began dating. Goessaert, an orthotics and prosthetics technician, has worked there since April 2019, but his connection to Holland Bloorview goes back much further.

“I have been a left leg amputee since I was born and have had my prosthesis, a device that replaces a part of the body, made at Holland Bloorview since I was around 3 years old,” he tells PEOPLE. “I now work to make the same kind of prosthetic devices that gave me so much when I was young.”

“I never imagined I would find career joy as well as the love of my life there,” he adds of Dunphy, who is an executive assistant in the hospital’s Teaching and Learning Institute.

Using his skills and expertise, Goessaert even had an opportunity to build his own prosthesis at the facility, which he wore to walk down the aisle.

During their wedding “redo” at the hospital, the couple posed for photos in some of the spots at Holland Bloorview that are most meaningful and memorable to them — “like the stop sign just outside the hospital where Will first asked me if he could drive me home,” Dunphy says.

“We also had photos taken in the hospital cafeteria where we had our very first conversation,” she adds.

Goessaert says they will treasure the pictures as “a cute, fun reminder” of the early days of their relationship. “I have a lot of memories at Holland Bloorview and I am glad these ones with Elizabeth have been captured,” he explains.

The couple — who got engaged during a trip to New Orleans in January 2023 — says that while many of their work colleagues attended their official wedding on May 4, they still wanted to share their special day with the entire staff, who has cheered on their relationship from the start.

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“Everyone is always so excited for us and it is wonderful to have the support and love from those we work with every day. Holland Bloorview is its own little community, and we love being a part of it,” Dunphy explains.

For Goessaert, in particular, celebrating his love for his now-wife at the hospital has been a poignant, full-circle moment.

“Holland Bloorview has been a large part of my life. I have been around the hospital as a patient, a research volunteer and now as an employee,” he says. “The legs that were made for me at the hospital as a child have empowered me to build them better for the kids we work with and inspired me to be a part of the amazing care that I received as a kid. It is really fulfilling.”