Rain or Shine this couple was going to celebrate their Love.
Ashley & Frank got married right at the beginning of the pandemic when the world started to learn more about Covid-19. They had their wedding on a Sunday, just one day before any groups of 10 or more became illegal.
2 hours before their wedding ceremony, it started to pour down rain. They had planned an outdoor wedding as you will see in the pictures below.
However, this day was destined to be their wedding day. It stopped raining just in time for the ceremony.
They were meant to be together and nothing was going to stop their celebration.
The Planning
Ashley & Frank planned their wedding for 200 guests on their own and paid out of pocket for it.
They were such a gorgeous Bride & Groom and are even more gorgeous for sharing their tips on how they planned their wedding day.
This is what they say: We planned our wedding ourselves but had a wedding day coordinator. Having a wedding coordinator on the wedding day was so essential.
The most surprising thing during the wedding planning was how expensive actually having a wedding can be.
Advice For Brides
Ashley says: Remember it is about the marriage, but this is also meant to be the happiest day of your life. Even when it comes to shoes, I chose to be comfortable in my tennis shoes rather than being uncomfortable on the happiest day of my life
Advice For Couples
The 3 things that we found most helpful when planning were; create a budget and stick to it, shop around quite a bit before deciding on major items, don’t be scared to go with less popular options.
On your wedding day relax, let go, and don’t try to control things, the day has arrived and there’s nothing you can do about it.
Enjoy the moment! We were surprised by how quickly the day goes.
Advice For Grooms
Frank says: Be involved in the planning, after all, you plan on being married only once
The Ceremony
During the wedding ceremony, we had a harpist play Can’t help falling in love – Elvis Presley for our processional song and Wedding March – Mendelssohn for our recessional song.
She also played the music for our cocktail hour.
We decided on writing our own vows. It took us two hours to write them. It was such a beautiful moment reading our vows to each other.
However, we have to say our First look is a favorite moment. We could not hold back our tears, we will never forget it.
The Reception
For our reception, we chose buffet-style catering. We served Texas barbecue and sweet tea.
Our wedding cake was a 3 layered Vanilla flavored cake.
We let the DJ choose the music for the reception but we also created a playlist with songs we like.
Our first dance song was If I Ain’t Got You – Alicia Keys.
The Party
We definitely wanted to turn up the fun so we did a surprise dance for our guests, 2 of our groomsmen took part in the dance with us.
Since our guests were excited about the dance, we invited everyone to come to learn the steps with us.
It definitely got everyone up and on the dance floor and led to tons of dancing throughout the evening.
We chose to have a post-wedding party. Since we had a smaller wedding with limited guests, we did still want to celebrate with other individuals who we were not able to have at the wedding.
The details
We each had 6 bridesmaids and groomsmen. We had a guest list of 200 but they did not all attend primarily because of Covid.
Our ceremony was outdoors and our reception was a hybrid of both indoors and outdoors. We had 7 floral arrangements of roses and baby’s breath. Ashley tried on 3 dresses before finding the one.
Vendors
