It’s been awhile since my last update about our wedding plans and our engagement overall! 
After our engagement in November 2019, we wanted to completely enjoy the engagement season without the pressure of making plans ASAP. For those new around, here’s a link to our St. Lucia engagement! 
If you’ve been following since the engagement, then you know I originally wanted to elope! Crazy to think about now since none of us have really traveled this past year, especially internationally… 

A little background for those new here: 
To me, having a wedding meant having high expectations with every single wedding detail to make it perfect & that was something I didn’t anticipate to devote time toward exceeding, or even know where to begin. In fact, an elopement off the coast with Jared, the perfect dress, and a great photographer were my only requirements to tie the knot. 
 *insert our discussion with families + friends*
This conversation was a pivotal moment that changed our outlook considering whether to secretly elope with a big celebration afterwards or to actually have a wedding and include our family and friends. While, yes this day would be THE MOST important for us as a couple- it would also be one of the most important days for them, too. So weighing this into our options, Jared & I had some honest discussions  – and considered literally *allllll* of the factors, we analyzed our priorities, our budget, and what exactly our dream situation and/or expectations looked like. 
Overall, we wanted to rest assured that the decision made would be one we wouldn’t regret in the future.

YOU GUYS, I. HAVE. SO. MANY. UPDATES TO SPILL 
I’ll be honest, I’ve been dying to share every single decision with you – BUT It was important to me that the time I did spend on anything wedding related I wanted to be fully present. Basically, I wanted to be sure I made each decision with full attention to every detail and devote the time & energy it deserved.
Overall, I’ve been hesitant to share much of anything on Instagram in regards to our planning. S/o to 2020 for throwing a huge wrench in quite literally every avenue possible & I felt as if I should wait until life was looking a bit less catastrophic before sharing with the world…
For starters, COVID…
I feel like you already see where I’m headed with this one…but as you can imagine, this definitely put a spin on things. Being a bride-to-be in 2020 was definitely not how I pictured our engagement to look and luckily we weren’t extremely affected by it from a wedding perspective like so many couples have been. But it definitely placed a huge question mark into the equation with the worldwide shutdown – questions came up like;

“Should we proceed planning as if life will resume to normal by the time 2021 rolls around?”
“What if our vendors/venue close up shop and go out of business?”
‘What will the health of our families look like? What will our health look like?”
’What are our vendors cancellation policy?”
‘If our date changes, how much money will we lose? Would we be able to secure the same vendor?”
“Will weddings even be legal in 2021? Or will large gatherings be forbidden indefinitely?”
“Do we feel comfortable still having a wedding?” Etc etc etc

In fact, the national/statewide quarantine which was enforced literally happened the week after  booking our venue and date…*yikes* 
So, here we are. And as of today…our wedding is still happening. Will things be a bit different? For sure!
Rest assured wedding planning details are not forgotten & will be included to be shared along the way!

Currently, our wedding planning is far from over and there’s so much more to come- right now allll the details are being thought through…hence my absence on Instagram as of late.
But for today’s post, let’s focus on our Save The Dates  + the incredible team that helped us accomplish making them! 

Bride Tip: If you’re trying to decide between an (planned) elopement versus a wedding, some factors I would suggest considering prior to committing to any final decisions 
–       When envisioning this day in your life, what do you see? What are your “must haves”? (ie. Is it the location? The people? Photos? Etc.)
–       What’s your overall wedding budget? Are you going to be responsible for payments or will you have financial support?
–       How many people would you be inviting if you did have a wedding?
–       If eloping, what’re your options for location & would you want any close family/friends to be present? 
–       Can you afford and/or will you need a local planner to assist with the details you may not have time to coordinate?
–       If your heart is set on a specific photographer or venue- get their open dates first!

Once we decided to move forward with wedding planning, we needed to find 2 things:
a VIBE + a VENUE.
Finding our venue happened quite easily since I had researched just about every single venue within the radius of Florida that we were willing to consider.

I wanted to decide on these two things prior to shooting our Save the Dates for 2 reasons:

1. You (obviously) need a date to send for your guests to save. Lol, sounds like a no brainer, but as a bride who’s jumping into wedding planning you kind of get an overwhelming feeling to accomplish everything at once (or at least in my experience) – figuring out the overall vibe to your wedding BEFORE making save the dates will help you grasp a better idea of what you want the wedding to look like + will also allow you to use that creative energy toward personal touches/details you want include in the save the dates, too!
2. I wanted our Save The Dates to be somewhat cohesive to the feel of our wedding.
I took to Pinterest shortly after finding our venue, made an inspiration board to help me dial in styles I loved & figure out an overall theme / style I was aiming for. I knew I wanted the wedding to be elegant, formal, but also unique & a little non-traditional.

V E N D O R S
Our Hair and Makeup Team: Before The Aisle

I decided to do a hair and makeup trial similar to what I hope for it to be on the wedding day. I mean, if you’re going to do a consultation with a trial you might as well make the makeup & hair worth it, right?! Honestly when I was booking I knew nothing about the type of hair or makeup I truly wanted. My only requests were to apply whatever makeup was best for a full coverage without a cakey look & to be sure that if I were to sweat that this wouldn’t affect my makeup or cause it to bleed…Let’s be honest, we all want to look like the most incredible version of ourselves on our wedding day! 

Well, thankfully I found Kristen – the founder of Before The Aisle. She called me right away after inquiring about availability and was more than happy to get me in for a trial the morning of our shoot (mind you, this grand idea to trial my hair + makeup to use for our save the dates came to mind superrrr last minute). 

The morning of I arrived at their *very insta worthy* ‘babe cave’ where she and Taylor gave me this BEAUTIFUL look and truly made me feel like a bride-to-be!

Below are some close ups of my look. To be honest, my hair on our wedding day will likely be different not because I didn’t love the curls she gave me- but because I do plan on putting my extensions back in (miss them so much!)… but regardless, I know I can 100% trust Kristen’s styling skills for my day-of hair!  
These girls will be doing not only my hair & makeup, but will also be offered to my wedding party, too.

Makeup by Taylor + Hair by Kristen
Find them on Instagram here or their website: https://www.beforetheaisleweddings.com to look into more of the services they offer!

Photography: Kartsie Photography
Prior to our shoot I had only followed Kartsie Photography on Instagram and obsessed over her amazing shots behind the scenes. Jared & I decided that we wanted save the dates with updated photos and since our wedding photographer is (literally) flying from across the country, we immediately thought of Kartsie! 
I should probably preface that this post is NOT sponsored in anyway – it’s simply me completely in love with our experience and thrilled that we found the most amazing, genuine couple to take our engagement photos AND they produced AMAZING shots that represent us so well!
When we arrived it was as if we had known Kaila and JP for years! Personally, I’m not too shy in front of the camera- but given the fact that Jared has less exposure, I think opening up in front of complete strangers can feel a bit awkward without a bunch of previous experience.… BUT S/O TO KAILA & JP because I cannot express just how comfortable they made us feel! Honestly, this is a huge factor in getting “the shot”- if you aren’t comfortable, chances are you don’t look very natural. This duo kept us laughing the ENTIRE time and made sure to give us not just helpful suggestions when changing positions or expressions- but also positive reinforcement, too!

Overall, if you’re looking for an Orlando photographer (they travel everywhere, too) for your wedding / engagement etc. They will NOT disappoint- tell them we sent ya! In fact, I’ve already tried booking our next shoot with them, Hahaha 

Stationary: Minted 
Having absolutely no prior knowledge or really idea of the Save the Dates I wanted- creating Save the Dates took me quite a bit of time. However, this actually had nothing to do with the company we chose & mostly due to my indecisiveness on which direction we were headed with our wedding/theme/aesthetics overall! In fact, I found myself loving so many designs on the Minted site to the point where I basically let Jared have the final say & committed to the final design that we went with! 
We’ve used Minted in the past for holiday cards & the site has a feature that saves addresses + allows you to use again for any recurring card recipients that you may send to each year without having to manually enter in each + every name – IMO: suchhhh a time saver!
Quite honestly the toughest part about actually using their site was having too many options; here are a few designs we were torn between choosing: Option A, Option B, Option C, + Option D
This is the design we went with & we ended up LOVING the final product!