OUR LOVE STORY
We met at a dance studio in Vancouver, Canada at the end of 2010. Steph had just returned from a solo backpacking trip and wanted to try something outside her comfort zone, and she ended up taking dance classes at a studio where Katie worked as an instructor. We became friends over the course of about 6 weeks, and then we quickly fell in love. We celebrate our dating anniversary as January 21, 2011 which is also Katie’s birthday. It’s the day we officially became a couple before Katie came out and introduced her friends to her first ever girlfriend at her birthday party.
9 months later we moved in together, and made our first home in the Gastown neighbourhood of Vancouver, where we lived for a year and a half. We were both self employed and working hard to build our careers, and we’d take quick getaways together any chance we had, dreaming of a time when we would be able to travel more.
2 years into our relationship, we left behind our life in Vancouver in search of something bigger. We moved across the country to Toronto, and spent 2 years living and working in Canada’s biggest city. We would go on travel adventures anytime we could, and on a special trip down to NYC in the spring of 2014, Steph proposed! We got engaged in the Gramercy Park neighbourhood of Manhattan outside our favourite restaurant, while a friend played our song on the guitar, sitting on the steps of a brownstone.
Newly engaged and embracing the next chapter of our life, a work opportunity moved us from Toronto to Niagara Falls, where we bought our first home together. We lived there through 2015 while we planned our wedding, and had a taste of suburban life. That year a pup stole our hearts, and our family grew to include little Theo! A happy and energetic Maltese-poodle, who would become the best adventure buddy we could ever ask for.
At the end of that year we got married back home in Vancouver, 5 years after we first met and fell in love. We had a small winter wedding on December 28, 2015 between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, and celebrated with our friends and family from all over the world. Both the ceremony and reception were held in an intimate cocktail bar, in the main square of our old Gastown neighbourhood. It was a beautiful, magical, perfect day.
After a blissful week in the Caribbean on our honeymoon, we went back to our house and our routine in Niagara Falls, quickly realizing that we wanted something different for our married life together. We knew it was time for a big change, and within a couple months we left our work contracts, rented out our home, and took the leap into full-time travel - something that had long been a dream of ours.
We started sharing our life and our adventures on social media, and in the summer of 2016 the idea for Lez See the World was born. Our trips took us all over the world and we began to grow an amazing online community through sharing our story. From road tripping across Canada coast to coast, to taking little Theo to Europe for the first time, we fell in love with a life of travel. Over the next few years we started building Lez See the World into a business, something that could allow us to sustain full-time travel long term.
In 2019 we bought a condo in Vancouver, somewhere that could be a part-time home for us in between trips, and a part-time rental property. Then when the world shut down a year later, we found ourselves living there full-time, back in the city we first called home together. Being unable to travel forced us to slow down for the first time in years, work on growing our business, and get clear about what we wanted the next chapter of our life to look like.
On our 5th wedding anniversary at the end of 2020, Katie surprised Steph with her own proposal, and asked if she could take her name. We took photos at the hotel where we got ready on the morning of our wedding, and re-created some of the memories from our special day. It was amazing to celebrate 5 years of marriage and 10 years together, by officially becoming the Burlton family!
As the pandemic continued, we spent most of our time in Vancouver and only travelling locally. With the growing difficulty of still managing the rental of our home in Niagara Falls, at the end of 2021 we decided to sell the house and close the chapter on our life in Ontario. Taking a pause from international travel gave us the opportunity to fall back in love with our beautiful home province, because no matter how many new destinations we visited around the globe, British Columbia was still one of the most incredible places we’d ever seen. With that, a new dream was born of investing in a second property somewhere in BC.
In 2022 we started our search for a special property where we could build a little sanctuary for ourselves. Somewhere that we could enjoy the natural beauty of BC, that was only a few hours away from the city. We narrowed our search to Vancouver Island, the Gulf Islands, and the Sunshine Coast, and in the spring of 2022 we found the perfect waterfront piece of land on one of the Southern Gulf Islands, just a few hours away from Vancouver by ferry.
When travel opened up again, we were excited to get back to life on the road. By 2023 we were doing constant back to back trips, nonstop adventure, and making up for all the lost time. The energy we spent growing our business during the pandemic was paying off with some amazing opportunities, and we made so many unforgettable memories travelling the world again with little Theo.
After a couple years of being back to full-time globetrotting, we finally hit travel burnout after so much time on the road. Living out of suitcases, moving around once a week on average, and juggling so much on our plates, we were ready for more balance in our life. It had been more than 2 years since we bought our dream island property, and in the summer of 2024 we decided it was time to start building a home there.
Craving a new chapter where we could travel more intentionally and actually make space to slow down, we wanted to create a getaway where we could rest between trips. A break from city life, travel, and nonstop adventure, somewhere we could truly recharge. We decided to work with a builder on a luxury tiny house for the land, the first step in creating our dream oceanfront property. We got to customize every detail of the tiny home, and it was delivered to our property the following summer.
Over the past year, we’ve settled into this new chapter of our life together. We’re splitting our time between the city and our island getaway, while still fitting in some amazing travel adventures. We’re having so much fun embracing tiny house living, and the slow pace of the island has been exactly what we were craving. This was a huge project to take on and it definitely wasn’t easy, we’re so proud of ourselves for making it happen.
We recently celebrated 15 years together, and we’ve sure lived a lot of life in that time! We’ve been married for 10 years, we’ve travelled to 45 countries, we’ve built a business, Theo is a senior doggie now, and we own two properties. We’re so grateful for our love story, and to continue building this dream life together. We can’t wait to see where it takes us next.
