Westin Harbour Island Saves the Day
Latin Wedding at Westin Harbour Island
Bride and Groom forced to Change Venues 24 hours before Wedding
Imagine finding out 28 hours before your wedding that you have to change your venue? This is what happened to Eleni & Ronald Akers. After planning their wedding for a year, they had find a new venue with only 24 hours till the ceremony. When you think of all the planning that goes into a wedding and to find out that you have to change a venue can be disasterous for a bride. I was shooting the first dance of another wedding when I received the text from the cordinator, that the venue had changed. Thanks to some quick work of the cordinator, Beth from flaweless occasions and the fliexibility of the Westin Harbour Island, the wedding of Eleni & Ronald was still a success. I still don’t know how they were able to get the word to all their guests, but somehow everyone arrived on time to the ceremony. Ironically, Eleni & Ronald had met at Jackson’s on Harbour Island, so perhaps it was fitting to have a wedding at Westin Harbour Island.
We Started off the day with the bride getting ready at the Marriott Waterside, such a great venue for a bride getting ready. For a bride having to deal with what Eleni had to deal with in the day leading up to the wedding, she was pretty chilled. Joe our photographer and myself (Randy) rode with the bridal party for the short 1/4 mile drive over the bridge to the Westin Harbor Island, the shortest Limo ride I’ve ever had.
The ceremony took place in the beautiful atrium of the Westin Harbor Island, perfect for a wedding in the warmer months. With the lighting it feels like you are outside, yet in the comfort of a air conditioned room.
After the ceremony, the bridal party celebrated inside a party bus as we headed toward University of Tampa for pictures. The party bus was a great idea, allowing the bridal party to let loose, after all the stress of the ceremony and the issues the day before. The driving mistakenly took us to Ybor City, but that was completely ok, because it just gaved the bridal party more time “getting down” in the party bus, as you see on the video.
After the pictures at University of Tampa we headed by to the Westin Harbour Island, where Kevin our DJ from Celebrations of Tampa Bay entertained the guests til the end of the evening.
Joe and I took the bride in the courtyard area on the south side of the Westin. The outdoor night lighting here, along with our low light lense, really produced some nice warm intimate shots of the bride and groom.
The evening ended with a Sparkler Exit which we shot both by drone and ground level cameras. For more info on having a wedding at Westin Harbour Island see http://www.westintampaharbourisland.com/tampa-wedding