This fairytale-loving couple has opted for a fairytale wedding at the historic Union Station Hotel in downtown Nashville! After Jennifer + William's Disney engagement, they decided on a destination wedding in Nashville since it's a great central location for all the family traveling in to see the couple tie the knot. Sadly it poured rain on the day of their engagement photo session, so Zoe of Zoe Life Photography suggested taking the shoot to where all the magic will happen – the Union Station Hotel. Their wedding planning seems to be going swimmingly, and I interviewed Jennifer to give us all the inside scoop on the shoot and her wedding plans! Check it all about below!
Jennifer + William
Union Station Hotel
Engaged on 11.10.15
Photo Session on 4.23.17
Vendor Credits:
Photographer | Zoe Life Photography
Venue | Union Station Hotel
How did you get engaged? Tell us about your proposal:
Jennifer: We got engaged November 10, 2015 in Disney World! My parents live in Florida and his family was in Orlando for two of his sisters' band trip. I love Disney (I go multiple times a year) so I thought we were just going to spend time with his family and ours (they were meeting for the first time) and it was just a nice vacation. On one of our last days, we spent the day running the parks and we returned to our hotel that even at the Animal Kingdom Lodge. Before we went up to our room, Will asked if I wanted to take a walk around the grounds and take a look at all of the animals at night. After our walk we headed back up to the room and when I walked in the room was covered in rose petals with candles and an engraved Cinderella shoe sitting on the table next to a little blue box! After that he got on his knee as asked me to marry him! I immediately said yes and we spent the rest of the evening celebrating with an amazing bottle of wine my dad have given us and sharing the news with friends and family! The room was set up so beautifully and I love the little glass shoe as a keepsake to remind us of the day!
How many guests are you expecting?
Jennifer: About 85 guests, all family and close friends.
What’s your approach to your wedding budget?
Jennifer: Our Budget is around $25,000 but if needed we could go a little higher. We're using that number as a guide but we have some flexibility. We tried really hard to keep it as close as possible.
What’s your wedding style?
Jennifer: I would call my wedding style vintage romantic. I love the old hollywood glamour vibe, but didn't want it to scream “Great Gatsby” wedding or being older and a little stuffy. I joked with a lot of family and friends that it was a Tower Of Terror themed wedding – back when the hotel was in it's glory days obviously haha! But we have a lot of gold and wine/burgundy colors and our venue goes along perfectly with the feeling we wanted!
What have you most enjoyed about being engaged?
Jennifer: I think we've enjoyed just getting to plan a special day for us that we can celebrate with friends and family! I don't think I could pick just one thing I've enjoyed most!
Tell us about your engagement session. Where did it take place?
Jennifer: We don't live in Nashville but would love to when we buy a house, so that was some of the inspiration behind a Nashville destination wedding. It was also in the middle of both of our families so it was a great place for everyone to come together. We planned a trip in April to visit and get a lot of planning done and our original engagement shoot was schedule for Sunday in Centennial Park around sunset. Plans changed though when it proceeded to rain the entire weekend with no sign of stopping so we had to find a place to relocate to! Luckily Union Station said we could have our photoshoot there! It was absolutely beautiful, with the scenery and the atmosphere of the building it was such a fun experience and it was great to spend a little more time at our actual wedding venue and scope out some awesome places to take photos on the day! We were definitely a little stiff at first but Zoe, our photographer, made us feel incredibly comfortable and encouraged us to just talk and be ourselves and from then on we had a great session!
What did you like most about the session?
Jennifer: It's hard to pick just one thing! First off the venue was beautiful but I think one of my favorite things was just getting some beautiful photos done that really capture the two of us! I always joke that we don't have any pictures together so being able to look back on these is really special! Zoe was also great at having really creative ideas to get some gorgeous shots and she also made us feel comfortable in front of the camera. She did an amazing job capturing the essence of our relationship and we got a lot of beautiful photos our of our session! I wasn't originally planning on using a photos of us on our wedding invites but we loved the photos so much that we ended up using one when designed the invitations! Overall it was a successful day!
Thanks for sharing this beautiful engagement session with us today, Zoe! And thank you to Jennifer for being so candid about your wedding plans – congrats! You can find more of Zoe Life Photography's work here on her webiste and also here on Instagram. 🙂
