neely & mark | winter park wedding photography » marissa moss photography blog

… insight from neely …

what was your favorite moment, or favorite part, of your wedding day?

The whole day was my favorite part! We were putting the last minute touches on everything up until the night before the wedding so once the day finally arrived I was ready to just enjoy the day. If I have to pick a favorite moment, I think it would be when my husband and wedding party walked into the reception while everyone was at the cocktail hour. It was such a special moment to see how our hard work came together and to share the moment with our best friends.

is there anything you wish you had done differently when planning your wedding?

I’m normally a laid back person and not much of a planner and I think I underestimated the amount of time some of the details would take to get done. We had a lot of fresh citrus in our wedding decorations so a lot of the smaller details could not be done until a few days before the wedding. It was also tricky to plan a wedding in Winter Park from D.C. If I could do anything differently, I would have made sure to come up with better game plans for the week of the wedding to avoid scrambling at the end. It took a lot of family and friends to pull it all together at the end!

which three vendors were most important to you when planning your wedding?

Photographer 🙂 – We knew the actual wedding day would be a blur and I wanted to make sure we had beautiful photos to remember our big day!

Caterer – Mark and I love cooking together and going out to eat so food was an important part for our wedding! We wanted to make sure the food was memorable for our guests which is why we chose shrimp and grits to start instead of salad!

Flowers – I wanted our wedding to have a garden/orange grove feel and having lots of unique flowers and citrus was important to bringing this idea to life.

what was your biggest wedding day savings? (and was it worth it?)

When we were choosing our venue we were between two places and opted for the Winter Park Civic Center where we basically had a blank canvas to plan our wedding. It ended up saving us a bunch because we could bring our own alcohol/choose our own caterer rather than being limited by the one-two vendors at the other venue option. It was totally worth it and we were able to pick our top food options and alcohol without going over budget!

what was your biggest wedding day splurge? (and was it worth it?)

Our biggest splurge was probably either the flowers or the pies. We opted for doing mini-pies and mini-bundt cakes which were totally worth it! We intended on doing pies instead of wedding cake as a cost saver because but the pies ended up costing more than we thought. Everyone loved the pies and bundt cakes (they were so good!!) and it added an extra decoration to our reception so I’m glad we did this! A few weeks before the wedding we decided to add bunches of eucalyptus to the church pews which were very pretty. The bunches looked great and we were able to put them on the pie table at the reception but we probably could have saved a few hundred dollars without them.

what was the best advice you received when planning your wedding? (and did you listen?)

So many people told us that the actual wedding day will fly by and you will barely remember it. Mark and I tried to keep that in mind and just take in and enjoy the day! I think we did a pretty good job of making sure to take in the moments (and eat!) on our special day!

was there anything encountered during wedding planning that was unexpected?

During the reception we were a little behind schedule and everyone was having a great time dancing so we ended up extending the reception for an extra half an hour! We ended up not really being able to do a big exit because the shuttles had to leave right after the reception ended but it was worth it!

when you look back on your wedding day in 50 years, what do you think you’ll remember most?

I will remember my husband’s face when I walked down the isle- it was such a surreal moment to know that we actually getting married! I will also remember the love and support we had from our family and friends. Some of the best (and maybe most stressful) moments were the late nights tying ribbons and building chocolate boxes all together. So many people stepped in to help and it makes us feel so lucky to be surrounded by such great people!!

… how it all came together …