Multicultural Enchanted Ballroom Wedding

Stephanie Weers
July 17, 2017
Categories: Cultural Beauty, Real Weddings, The Blog
Tags: Cultural Beauty, Multicultural, Real Wedding

Amanda and Aaron are busy young professionals who wanted a thoughtfully designed wedding minus all the planning stress. They teamed up with the amazing Lisa Stoner Events, explaining their vision for a multicultural, enchanted ballroom wedding and Lisa (needless to say) hit it out of the park. She brought the outdoors in with 12-foot trees plus greenery galore and Amalie Orange Photography and Seltzer Films captured the moments these two will treasure for a lifetime.

[iframe http://player.vimeo.com/video/214184848 600 338]

From Lisa Stoner, wedding planner and designer… Amanda and Aaron’s wedding planning story was not unlike many professional couples today; Aaron as a budding oral surgeon and Amanda as a full-time nurse, pursuing her Master’s Degree in Nursing. Hailing from Texas, Amanda was new to Orlando, and I didn’t want the overwhelming planning to take away the joy in the leading months to their wedding.

Amanda very simply explained to me that her favorite place to decompress and have a glass of wine with Aaron was on their backyard deck. It gave her a sense of tranquility in their very busy lives. That’s all I needed to know! I went forth with the idea to create an elevated and elegant aesthetic by bringing in 12 foot live trees, ferns, garlands of greenery and magical fairy lights intertwined in all of it with the help of my talented design partners. Revealing this enchanting ballroom “backyard” to her and Aaron just before guests were invited inside, was certainly the highlight of the entire process!

From the bride Amanda… I was born in the beautiful state of Texas but my mom is from Belize and my dad is from Trinidad and Tobago. I really wanted to celebrate culture because I wanted to share with other people at least a small part of what makes me who I am.

Jumping the broom: Was used by slaves starting in the 1840s-1850s to symbolize the sealing of a union – since most marriages around the ties of slavery were not recognized. In the 20th century what was seen initially as a custom that was essentially pushed upon the African Americans is now seen as a fun and treasured ceremony.

When I initially told Aaron about this idea he was not all that interested and then the next thing I knew he was taking a stick from a tree in the backyard, peeling the bark off of it and sanding it down so it was completely smooth. He took a huge branch that bears the fruit on the palm tree and trimmed that back to make the actual broom itself. He used twine to put all of it together – and carved our initials and wedding date into it. So it’s really meaningful because it was totally handmade from parts of plants around our home.

I always knew when I got married I wanted to have a pan player somehow incorporated into the wedding as a nod to my dad and his home country. In Trinidad and Tobago before Ash Wednesday there is an annual celebration called Carnival. I went for the first time in 2012 and that was also the first time my dad had ever played mas. Playing mas means you’ve chosen a masquerade band to participate with and you’ll be chippin (a march/shuffle/dance combo step) alongside mas goers with a similar costume.

The Junkanoo band we hired was based out of The Bahamas, but the feeling it gave was very similar to that of a small band in Carnival. I wanted our guests to not just come to a wedding – I wanted them to have an experience. The band, along with everything else, laid such an amazing foundation to really add a taste of culture to our wedding.