Meet your mirror image: How a friendship formed between two doppelgängers

Mix-ups and look-alikes are not uncommon. But at Felicia Harding’s wedding on Vancouver Island this summer, attendees were confusing the bride with her friend Brittany Delaney. 

Even a white dress wasn’t enough to differentiate between the two petite women with brown curly hair, bangs and wide smiles. 

And it wasn’t just the guests.  

“Her husband came up to me a couple times and was like ‘Oh,'” remembers Delaney, who lives in St. Albert, Alta. 

Adds Harding: “I had a lot of friends tell me afterwards that they knew she was around, and they obviously knew I was wearing a wedding dress.

“But multiple times they were just like ‘Oh yeah, there’s Felicia.”

This confusion is something the women have become accustomed to. It’s actually how they met in the first place.

Delaney runs Confections Cake Company in St. Albert, while Harding is a musician based in Victoria.

Six years ago, Delaney’s former art teacher attended one of Harding’s concerts. She tagged them both in a social media post that commented on their similarities. 

“I clicked on her pictures and I was like, ‘What the hell?'” Delaney told CBC’s Radio Active. 

She messaged Harding and the two started talking.

“Usually when you get somebody mentioning that you look alike to somebody else, you look at the person and you think, ‘I don’t even see it, or I guess I see it a little bit,'” says Harding. 

“But when I looked at photos of Brittany, I was shocked because she really does look like me. And so we became friends.”

For five years the women spoke online, bonding over their twin-like features. Then Harding planned a trip to Edmonton and Delaney offered to meet in person for the first time. 

Delaney’s mother and her son Atlas picked up Harding from West Edmonton Mall then took her to Delaney’s business in St. Albert. 

Struck by the resemblance and curious to see how effective the likeness was, Delaney’s mom told Harding to pick up the toddler from the car. 

The child was unfazed at being held by Harding — at least until they entered the bakery and he saw his mom inside. 

Beyond their physical similarities, the two share West Coast roots, having grown up three hours from each other on Vancouver Island — Delaney in Comox, B.C., and Harding in Victoria. 

“We do have quite a lot in common,” said Harding. “We’re both entrepreneurs.… Our voices are similar and our mannerisms are kind of alike too.” 

The pair can unlock each other’s phones with their faces, something they’ve discovered during multiple meet-ups in the last year. They’ve gotten so close that Delaney even made the cake for Harding’s wedding and drove it to the island for the celebration. 

Struck by their connection, Harding and Delaney took a DNA test this fall to see if their relation was just friendship or familial. 

“Turns out, we are not related at all,” said Harding.

The 23 and Me test looks back four generations, but because both Harding and Delaney are female there’s no Y chromosome involved. As a result, it doesn’t show any of their father’s side of the DNA or possible matches. 

“Apparently that whole side is a bit more murky, genetically speaking,” she said. 

They hope to do more testing with other relatives to see if there’s a connection further back, but for now the friendship they’ve formed means more than shared relatives. 

And their appearances still catch them off guard.

“You just feel like you’re looking at yourself a lot of the time,” said Delaney. Her son still responds to videos and pictures of Harding online, exclaiming “Mummy!”

On her end, Harding says she still comes across photos of Delaney online and does a double-take. Years of friendship have made no difference in her reaction to their striking resemblance. 

“It’s even more trippy today.”