Grape Stomp page 18
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‘Like it’s meant to be’ Story and photos by Miranda Gathercole
A Langley couple who are both recovering addicts win a dream wedding package and reconnect with family
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cott Doucette didn’t know what was happening when his fiancée, Taryn Vanderhout, phoned him screaming and then suddenly disconnected the line. But he knew it was good. “She called me and I couldn’t understand her,” he said. “She couldn’t even tell me.” What Vanderhout was trying to say was that the couple had just won a $10,000 dream wedding. “They phoned me and told me I won, I didn’t believe them,” Vanderhout said. “My boss pinched me, I was screaming and ecstatic. I said, ‘you’ve got to be joking me.’” They weren’t.
Vanderhout’s was the lucky ballot drawn from the Head Over Heels Wedding Fair at the Langley Golf and Banquet Centre last May. The prize ensured that a venue, decor, entertainment and much more would be financially covered when the couple tied the knot — a far cry from the City Hall wedding she and Doucette had been planning. The penniless couple were still working on rebuilding their lives after years of drug addiction and living homeless on the streets of Surrey and Langley. “It’s like it’s meant to be,” Vanderhout said. The couple first met as neighbours 11 years ago. Both addicted to drugs, their
relationship had “a rocky start.” “I call it the road of hell,” Vanderhout said. “Everybody has their downturns in life, and it actually makes you a strong person in my eyes,” she said. “It gives you a lot more strength and a lot more courage because these are the things most people don’t battle. Living on the streets really prepares you for the worst. Each day you just look at a different way of surviving.” Vanderhout eventually received help from a women’s recovery centre. She kept in contact with Doucette the entire six months she was in therapy through letters and phone calls. By the end of the program she was allowed to see him
once every two weeks for 15 minutes. But their relationship was frowned upon by the treatment centre. Doucette, who was trying to quit drugs on his own, was viewed by the centre as direct connection back into addiction. “We had stopped trying to do drugs for a year of failure, but we never quit trying to quit,” Doucette said. That was six years ago. Neither have touched drugs since. Cutting the connections with all of their old friends, the couple started their lives over. Vanderhout got a job at Dynamic Paint Products in Delta and Doucette at the warehouse next door. continued, PAGE 6
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