Felicity Church Wedding | Christina + Stuart

Wedding Planner: Uncommon Camellia | Bride prep: Hotel Monteleone | Ceremony + Reception: Felicity Church | Hair: AHB Hair and Makeup | Makeup artist: Tamara Soublet with Artistry by Camille | Florist: Ambrose Garden | Invitation suite: Minted | Cake: Gambino’s Bakery | DJ: Rock-It Productions | Second line band: Kinfolk Brass Band | Caterer: Copdeboscq | Oyster bar: Two Girls One Shuck | Linens: Perrier Party Rentals | Transportation: Luxe Limousine LLC | Dress designer: Martina Liana | Second shooter: Berkley Martin

Color palette
Our color palette was mostly blush. We also tried to incorporate a lot of sage greens into the flowers for a really lush look.

Describe your wedding
Lush, romantic, and New Orleans

How did you and Stuart meet?
We met in a programming class while pursuing our civil engineering degrees at the University of New Orleans. We had both just transferred from other colleges and all of our classes just so happened to align. We saw each other everyday in pretty much every class, so we couldn’t help but stick together. He asked me on a date at the beginning of our second semester, but he tried to wing it and we ended up not knowing what to do after dinner. We ended up meandering French Quarter together and listening to some jazz in Musical Legends Park and it wound up being a really sweet and romantic night.

How did he propose?
Keeping with our “New Orleans” theme, Stu proposed to me on Thoth Sunday (the Sunday before Mardi Gras) during the Thoth parade! Unbeknownst to me, all of our family and friends were there to watch the proposal: I wasn’t suspicious in the least because our families congregate at the same spot on Thoth Sunday, and the extra people that showed up, to me, seemed like a happy coincidence. He’d conspired with his uncle (who rides in Thoth) to have the float stop at our spot and have one of the riders toss me a pillow embroidered with “Christina, will you marry me? Love, Stu”. I caught the pillow, and when I turned around, Stu was down on one knee with the ring. Confetti exploded all around us and someone handed me some champagne. Honestly, it was so loud I didn’t even hear him ask, and likewise he didn’t hear me say “yes”. But we’re married now, so I guess we figured it out!

Most memorable moments from your wedding day
Our first look was really memorable. We decided to do one because it was more convenient to get the couples portraits out of the way before the ceremony and reception. We never expected to enjoy it as much as we did. It was a really beautiful and intimate moment between just the two of us, and we’re glad we got to enjoy each other’s presence away before the rush of the ceremony and reception. I still get goosebumps when I think back to the moment we first saw each other.

We really loved our wedding second line! It was so much fun dancing in the street with our closest friends and family to really amazing brass band music. It’s been my dream to have a second line for my wedding and we really had a blast! The best part was watching all the people coming out onto their front porches or looking out their windows to watch us moving through the street. Looking through our pictures you can really feel the joy!

Dancing to “La Bala” with my mom’s side of the family was really memorable. “La Bala” is an old line dance from my mom’s home country, El Salvador. We had people coming in from all over the country and from Central America for our wedding, so it was really exciting to see them all at once dancing to this song that they had grown up dancing to when they were teens. The song is entirely in Spanish, but that didn’t stop our English-speaking guests from joining on the dance floor!

First dance song
We danced to Ed Sheeran’s “Perfect”. Our first dance wasn’t that important to us, so we didn’t practice. We just had fun with it on the dance floor, chatting and trying to make each other laugh.

Cake flavors:
Stu specifically requested a Saints themed king cake as his groom’s cake. My cake was a traditional almond-flavored cake with strawberry filling. Both were delicious. It’s really difficult to resist eating the top tier of the cake that currently sits in our freezer!

Why did you choose New Orleans (more specifically Felicity Church) for your wedding?
We were both born and raised in New Orleans, so without question we had to get married here. The difficulty was finding a unique venue that could accommodate our guests (both our families are quite large). We’d attended weddings at just about every notable venue in New Orleans —historic hotels and mansions, plantations and museums —so it was challenging trying to find a place that was “new” and would surprise our guests, majority of which were locals as well. I’d surprisingly never heard of Felicity Church before, but after reading up on it on The Knot, we decided to tour it. It was the first stop on a list of venue tours, and we immediately knew it was perfect and never made it to our other tours. The charm of Felicity was indescribable: the beautiful natural lighting, the gorgeous natural wood floors and exposed brick walls provide a bit of rustic charm, but are beautifully maintained despite their age. Chris, the owner, was so charming, helpful, and so enthusiastically invested in providing us the wedding of our dreams, that we knew we were in the right hands. Felicity’s layout is entirely unique, and the transformation of the ceremony space into the reception space is something that our guests remember fondly and continue to bring up whenever we reminisce about our wedding day. We really adored Felicity Church, and I don’t think our wedding would have been as memorable had we gone with a different venue!

I would like to express my gratitude to my wedding coordinator, Amelie Pizz from Uncommon Camellia. I was at first hesitant to hire a coordinator, but she seriously took all of the wedding day stress off of my shoulders. Everything went so smoothly, and I was able to focus on each beautiful moment with my husband on my wedding day because she handled all of the little details that made our day perfect.