Dreams Resorts Weddings

LANCE & ASHLEY

The Dreams Resorts are one of our favorite chains to work at weddings in the Dominican Republic.  And the Dream La Romana Resort & Spa was the spot chosen by Lance & Ashley to celebrate their beautiful destination wedding in our sunny half-island.  Ashley has a background in interior design, and is a strong believer that God and nature always provide the best color palette.  Inspired by the sand on the beach, the greens and browns in the palm trees, paired with hints of pink in the sunset and white in the clouds, she wanted all things neutral using green, white, and pink as accents. 

About her small wedding guest list that ended with 60 assistants, Ashley says:  Individually, we have been through some challenging times and we truly wanted our guest list to be those that we felt like remained close during those times and who helped shape and mold us into the people that brought us closer together in our relationship.   We also thought it essential that we would have people that would continue to help us remain strong when we’d run into difficult times in our marriage. The day felt like we were genuinely joining two lives together. Having several days for the guests to get to know each other before the wedding day made the day so much more unique and special.

What is the fondest memory of your wedding day? 

• Wife:  Our families live all over the country.  A destination wedding was going to happen no matter where we had it.  I LOVED that we got to spend QUALITY time with both of our families, uninterrupted for days.
• Husband:  Spending time with friends and family and saying our vows.  We spent many long drives back to Nebraska, finding the perfect words to say to each other that day!

How did you find and decide on your wedding vendors?

  We found them ALL on social media! Pinterest was a lifesaver planning for a wedding in another country!  Especially when you have a design background and know pretty specifically what you want but don’t know how to make it happen!  Once we found the venue and Niko & Asia the rest quickly fell into place! Niko & Asia had a long list of recommendations and so did Jessica at Dreams Resorts.  We were truly blessed to have Anna, Niko & Asia, and Jessica to work with for the wedding. With my attention to detail coming from a design background and Lance’s attention to our budget, we know we asked the world of them for our big day, and they delivered!

 Why did you choose us as your Wedding Photographers

NCH Studio stood out to us the second we saw a Pinterest post with their photography featured when searching “Dominican Republic Destination Wedding.”  The most important thing for us in a photographer was to capture candid moments with our family. We cared more about raw emotion than posed photos, and you could tell that was the type of work Asia & Niko excelled in. We LOVED the questionnaire they provided to us since we did not have a chance to meet in person, we loved their recommendations for vendors (like Anna Nuet!), and we sincerely appreciated their time spent with us over Skype planning how we wanted to capture our perfect day!  I mean they even told us what times to avoid the sun before the wedding, so we weren’t lobsters for the big day!

Which wedding Photo is your favorite, and why? 

That’s the most challenging question here! Too many to name!  The photo of us kissing at the dinner table after the ceremony is probably my favorite!  It just perfectly captured the feel of the evening. We were on a beach with so many people walking by, but we just felt like we were in our little world surround by so many people who loved us.  For Lance ANY photo of us by the beach!

Any advice for brides to be/ newly engaged couples? 

Planning a wedding is exciting and stressful all at the same time.  Your conversations quickly go from “what do we want to do for date night?” to “we need to sit down and look at the seating chart” or “let’s go through the budget.”  Pretty soon it seems like all you do is talk about the wedding. As romantic as you may think it would be, it certainly makes your relationship feel like a business.  It can often make you feel like you’re morphing into another couple. In all honesty, some of the biggest fights we had was planning our wedding. Just remember that that phase will end!  After the wedding, it’ll feel like your dating all over again! The best advice someone told us was “anything that ends up going wrong the day of will be a funny memory to look back on.  At the end of the day, you’re still married!” Our wedding day it POURED out the entire morning of the wedding up until two hours before the ceremony. We weren’t even a bit nervous because come rain or shine at the end of the day, we’d be on our way to forever with one another!