Beth Anne + Tom | Florida Springtime Wedding

Beth Anne and Tom met online. Although neither of them had been in a serious relationship before, they started dating shortly afterward. "All through our dating relationship," Beth Anne recalls, "I prayed for what God wanted for us. Tom hadn't been to mass in a long time as he worked weekends. I never pushed him to come with me. But I shared the faith with him through my actions. Over time he came around and after he stopped working weekends, he asked to come to mass with me one Sunday, and has been by my side at mass ever since."

After 18 months of dating, they fell in love and started to discern marriage. Tom proposed to Beth Anne on the same bench where they met for their first date.

From the Bride: We had many family members come from out of town for our wedding. The week of the wedding we rented a big house for everyone to stay in together. My favorite memories of the wedding week were staying with my family and bridesmaids the days before the wedding and just having a lot of good "girl time." I really wasn't nervous; we went and got our nails done a few days before, and my manicurist said she'd never seen a calmer bride.

We were married in April (a popular month to get married in Florida because it's not too hot yet) at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Augustine. One unique thing we did in our ceremony was processing into the church together. We had several reasons for doing this, one being that my dad passed away when I was eight years old, but our pastor also shared that it's actually the most liturgically fitting way to process.

Since Tom and I were walking in together, we did a first look in the courtyard before the ceremony. I never thought I would do a first look, but I’m glad we did. It was a really special and intimate moment we had before all the craziness started. Some of my favorite photos are from that part of the day.

The reception was at Amici’s Italian Restaurant. My family is Italian and Tom’s is Polish. We didn’t intend on having an Italian reception, but it turned out really well!

Beth Anne's Spiritual Takeaway: As devout Catholics, it was important to us to evangelize to our guests in subtle ways. I think I had the most fun with this part of the wedding. A friend offered to make us prayer cards to give to our guests. I chose an image of St. Faustina and quotes from her diary, as we got married the weekend of the feast of the Divine Mercy.

Instead of the bouquet and garter toss I gave each of the single women a white rose with a note on it promising to pray for them and their vocations.

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Beth Anne + Tom | Florida Springtime Wedding

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