Have a conversation with Todd and Nicole Cameron and it quickly becomes evident they’re more than just casual fans of the Back to the Future movie trilogy.
One might even say they’ve built their relationship around it.
“We’re both pretty crafty and we kind of met through our love of crafting and costumes and stuff – we met at Halloween,” Todd said. “We were together for a few years and we did a lot of recreating movies with our costumes and fun little projects like that.”
They seemed like a good fit so when it came time to make it official with a proposal, Todd figured a worthy place to pop the question would be at Universal Studios while vacationing in southern California.
“I realized that we were going to be down there during Back to the Future Day (Oct. 21, 2015). It’s the day Doc and Marty arrive in the future, so that got me pretty excited,” Todd said.
So he created a DeLorean ring box, which some friends travelling with them smuggled down. “We recreated the Western Union delivery scene in front of Biff’s car,” Todd said. “We had it arranged with Universal Studios and they gave us a private tour of some of the cars, so that was pretty exciting.”
The couple has photos and video of Todd proposing to Nicole in front of Biff’s car where Nicole said “yes.” One year later, they held their marriage reception in the Departure Bay Kin Hut, where they recreated the Enchantment Under the Sea high school dance set.
“When [Todd] had mentioned we should do a Back to the Future wedding I kind of had my guard up about that,” said Nicole, who admits she loves trilogy, but said no one is as big a fan of the movies as is Todd.
But the theme of the wedding did appeal to her interest in anything to do with the 1950s.
“In the scene of the move there’s the dance in 1955, so I thought, with Todd wanting the Back to the Future wedding, that we could somehow compromise and have the 1950s aspect of Back to the Future, so we kind of compromised that way and we both got what we wanted,” she said.
Todd made a King Neptune statue; Nicole recreated the table settings; they hired a band complete with blue suits.
“We actually found a DeLorean as well,” he said. “We had a lot of fun with that.”
When the couple found out three stars from the original movie, Christopher Lloyd, Leah Thompson and Tom Wilson, were going to be at the Calgary Fan Expo, it looked like a good opportunity to finish off their personal life trilogy, so to speak, and get their photo taken with the stars.
And as, it turned out, a line from the first movie when Doc Emmett Brown tells Marty McFly and Jennifer Parker they urgently must travel forward in time with him to 2015 because, “No, no, no, no, no, Marty. Both you and Jennifer turn out fine. It’s your kids, Marty. Something’s gotta be done about your kids!” could be seen as more than just a strange coincidence.
“We had been trying to get pregnant and then just after we bought tickets we realized that we were pregnant,” Todd said. “So we were thinking what better way to announce our baby than to have our picture taken with the stars from the movie? They were more than gracious and held the sign and gave us hugs and handshakes and congratulations. So, yeah, we pulled off the trilogy.”
Nicole described Lloyd as a “super sweet and very gentle.”
“It was pretty cool to have him say, ‘congratulations’ in his Doc Brown voice … and Leah Thompson came over – I started kind of crying – and she came over and gave me a huge hug and she was so sweet,” she said.
As for the baby’s gender and name?
“We’re going to save that for a surprise,” Todd said.
