Amelia + Mark threw a wicked dance party in their Raleigh outdoor wedding celebration at the Park Alumni Center (go Wolfpack!)

This gregarious couple was intentional about planning a celebration that emphasized inclusion, diversity, and authenticity. The cherry on top: an Irish dance performance during the reception. This wedding was such a unique, refreshing wedding to photograph, and I’m so pumped to share the pictures from their day!

Read the Q&A with this fun couple, featured below, to learn more about their Raleigh outdoor wedding inspiration and photography experience!

1. What are some of your favorite things about your partner? How were these attributes expressed during or leading up to your wedding?

Amelia: Mark is so great because he’s so awesome but so humble and unassuming. He has the kindest soul and makes me laugh so hard every day with his dry witty humor. He also has an amazingly calm demeanor, which was a perfect balance to my more anxious, high-energy personality when it came to planning a wedding. Mark really balanced out the whole process for us.

Mark: Amelia brings such passion and enthusiasm to everything she does – it gives me such energy and joy to be around her. Especially when the day-to-day planning of the wedding got stressful or overwhelming, she made sure we never lost sight of the bigger picture – that we were planning a truly joyful and fun occasion for all the people we care about most.

2. What was most important to you in planning your Raleigh outdoor wedding?

Amelia: My sole priority was to have an amazing party, with all of our favorite people, with lots of food, drinks, and dancing. The dancing part was very important. And it went VERY well. 🙂

Mark: The priority for me was having all of our friends and families together for a fun night/weekend.

3. Are there any details or moments from your wedding that are particularly special to you? (E.g., you wore your momma’s dress, your partner unexpectedly serenaded you, there was a double rainbow all across the sky…).

Amelia: Oh man, lots of little things. I unexpectedly wore a pair of diamond earrings borrowed from my cousin and maid of honor, which had diamonds from my late grandmothers wedding ring. That was a very special last minute decision. The best man and maid of honor speeches were INCREDIBLE.

Mark: The speeches were a highlight for me as well. I also just really enjoyed seeing everyone gathered when we first walked out for the processional – it was so much fun and overwhelming (in a good way) to have all those people together after all the work that went in to planning everything.

4. Now that you’ve tied the knot (and survived!), what advice would you give to other folks planning their Raleigh outdoor wedding?

I think we did a great job in delegating wedding planning activities to those who wanted to help; one bridesmaid created our seating display, another created our family photo display; family members kindly took care of the thank you gift bags for guests.

It was freeing to let go of those decisions and let others we trusted to use their best judgment. We hired a day-of coordinator to manage all day-of coordination decisions as well – highly recommended!

It’s trite to say, but it’s still worth remembering: don’t sweat the small stuff. It’s easy to get bogged down in trying to coordinate and plan every minor detail; the reality is that not everything will go exactly as planned, and that fact won’t matter at all when it comes to how you or anyone else remembers the wedding.

5. What drew you to my photography style? Why did you ultimately decide to hire me? Was it worth it?

Ummm…YES! Totally worth it. Your “unconventional” theme of couples and wedding styles sealed the decision for us; checking out your website and seeing that you clearly value diversity in serving your clients/couples; something that is super important to us.