This session was shot by GMP founder and Principal Photographer Elizabeth Millar

Marlly & Wallace had their Lake Eola Peninsula Wedding on a very (and I mean very) bright, hot summer day. But don’t they make it look effortless?

There are many places around Orlando for chic outdoor marriage ceremonies. You can reserve an area to get married at Lake Eola and they have 15 different areas for rent at very reasonable prices. Their fee for a reservation like you see here is ballpark $600. The city even delivered the chairs and archway and then took them away!

I asked the City of Orlando what my couples would need to know about how to get this going and they told me, “For ceremonies at Lake Eola, couples should first reserve the location either by calling in or through the City of Orlando’s park reservation portal. Once their date/time is approved, we can add our ceremony set-up as an optional add-on.” This email was from a very helpful person named Gabe who said once couples do their general reservation, they could help arrange the chair delivery. Their email is gabriel.osorio@orlando.gov.

A great little touch that Marlly and Wallace thought about for their guests was to provide them with paper parasols to help with the sun and this also really helped with the photography because I could capture faces in the shade and everyone wasn’t squinting! A great touch I highly recommend for others.

An adorable part of getting married at Lake Eola is the presence of the park’s swans. The swans are all over and made a visit for this wedding ceremony, flapping their wings and even kissing at just the right time! I swear they weren’t paid actors but they very well could have been.

After their ceremony, we did group photos and then adventured around the park for their photo shoot while the people from the city came and cleaned up the chairs and arch. This meant that at the very end we were able to get some nice clean shots with the Chinese pagoda in the background.

A super fun fact about that pagoda is that it’s called the Chinese Ting and is a one-story Chinese pagoda built in China in 1988. It was disassembled and reassembled in Orlando, having been donated by Dr. Nelson Ying as a symbol of international friendship between Orlando and its sister city, Guilin, China.

Thank you so much for having me, Marlly and Wallace, it was so much fun sweating buckets with you!