Perfect day on the beach
Corrine and Michael Bernard – July 18, 2020
Leading up to our beautiful wedding at Hutchinson Shores Resort & Spa in Jensen Beach, we faced many difficult obstacles due to COVID-19. Our wedding planner, Cindy Morley from Eventful Moments, was our rock throughout the entire process. She had set us up with her A-team vendors and we were so excited for our big day.
But when the pandemic hit, our guest list significantly dropped and we were left with a lot of unknowns, including the possibility of the venue being closed. As if that were not enough, when Tom, the banquet manager we had been dealing with since we first toured the resort a year ago furloughed, we began to lose all hope of having our dream wedding on the beach.
Morley had been in close contact with all of the vendors and kept reassuring us all were a go for our big day. Things were not looking good in our eyes, which added stress on both of us. Deep down we both knew that we had no control over the pandemic, so whatever was going to happen with our wedding was going to happen.
We came to realize that if our big day had to be pushed back a year or two then that’s what had to happen. A week before our wedding, the banquet manager returned to work and called us immediately to let us know we were a go. That meant the world to us as we were finally ready to get married. Despite losing more than half of our guests, we did have about 65 people saying they would be there to celebrate our big day.
Our guests were coming from New York, New Jersey, Arizona, Florida and Virginia. However, a few days before the wedding, Jessica, the maid of honor, told us that she couldn’t travel from New Jersey to Florida because of her work COVID restrictions. This was devastating.
I quickly reached out to DJs Nick and Jaydee from Best Day Ever and we came up with a plan. We would surprise Corrine with Jessica on the big screen during the reception so she could give her maid of honor speech. Shouts to Best Day Ever for making that happen because it was absolutely amazing.
Next thing we knew, our wedding day arrived, but the weather forecast did not look promising to have a beach wedding or to a drone capture our wedding. Twenty minutes before the ceremony, Tom made the decision for us to have the wedding outside on the beach as the sun came out as well as the blue skies. Everything was falling into place as we hoped it would, but we had no idea how or if it was going to come together.
The flowers by Stephanie from South Forty Floral were beautiful, the arbor we had custom made looked amazing, Frank and Colleen from Eclipse Videography were absolutely spot on, Carolynn from Lightcap Studios and her team were so professional and finally the resort put no restrictions on us and allowed for us to enjoy every minute of our big day from the second Corrine walked down the aisle with her father to our last private slow dance with just the camera rolling on us.
We will remember every bit of what we went through leading up to our big day, but the way our wedding video, pictures and day turned out, it was nothing short of perfection.