Wedding Date on Jan 1, 2020

My name is Stephanie and I married Kevin on our 10 year dating anniversary. We met at UCF in calculus class. We dated a bit, but then went our separate ways for a few years and found ourselves back together again. After about 6 months of dating, we moved in together. We lived in Orlando for many years, but due to job opportunities/grad school we lived in NYC and now live in Philly. I’ve always said to him, home is always where you are, and that couldn’t ring truer! We were engaged in 2016 after doing the grueling Grouse Grind a day after I did a half marathon in Vancouver. Since Kevin and I have lived in several cities, we had a hard time figuring out where to get married. We were engaged right before I started grad school to become a pediatric nurse practitioner, so planning was on hold, but I did know exactly what wedding dress I wanted and bought it that year! Then in January of 2019, my cousin’s husband was killed in action. My last conversation with him was talking about how on earth was I going to figure out a venue. He asked me what are the priorities of your wedding. I laughed and said of course family is first, I want them all there! He said so matter of factly, well your decision of where the wedding should be easy then! The day we found out about his death, I told Kevin that we needed to have our wedding in Florida, because we knew that is what our hearts were telling us and he helped guide us to that decision. We visited one venue and booked it on the spot and decided to have it on the day we became boyfriend and girlfriend, which happened to be 10 years. Our wedding had 90 people including family and friends from Orlando, NYC, and Philly, all from different stages in our lives. There was so much love and we wouldn’t have had it any other way! I envisioned a wintery wonderland for our wedding (which is kind of difficult to do in FL), so we got a snow machine, asked our florist for winter greenery/florals, our rental company did a custom seating chart, diamond arch, and provided rentals to make it look magical, our lighting company creatively made a new "chandelier" of snowflake lights, and my mother even painted “snow” on some pinecones from her backyard that we placed as centerpieces. We decided to do our own vows. After being together for 10 years, it was so nice to speak from our hearts about how we still felt about each other after all this time. Our advice to brides and grooms is to not sweat the small stuff, love hard, and enjoy this day. We prioritized what was important to us. Booking KEJ Productions as our videographer was one of our highlights of wedding planning. They were able to capture small beautiful moments that we otherwise wouldn’t have seen. We jived with them and they felt like long-lost friends. We now have this beautiful footage that we can cherish year after year!