Spoken Bride Vendors | Spotlight, Vol. 16
/Are you recently engaged and ready to book your wedding vendors? Newly married or attending a wedding, and in search of gifts that affirm the vocation to marriage?
We are proud to serve you through the Spoken Bride Vendor Guide, the first online resource for distinctively Catholic wedding vendors: hand-selected professionals from around the U.S. with not only an abundance of talent, but a reverence and passion for the sacrament of marriage that brings a uniquely personal, prayerful dimension to their client experiences.
From photographers and videographers who understand how to capture the most significant moments of your nuptial Mass, to coordinators who understand the needs of Catholic couples, artists whose jewelry, stationery, and prints become enduring keepsakes long after your wedding day, clinical and theological experts in the fields of fertility and relationships, and beyond, Spoken Bride Vendors view their work as a call and find deep joy in putting their talents at the service of the Lord.
What’s more, our vendors are truly engaging and fun. With a range of stories, hobbies, and devotions, it’s our privilege to share who they are and connect them with their ideal clients--you, faithful Catholic couples who are energized by working with like-minded, prayerful individuals. Each month, we’ll be introducing, or re-introducing, you to members of Spoken Bride’s vendor community, and we encourage you to learn more through their full vendor listings.
Our Vendors for This Month (click to jump):
Amy and Kyle Catholic Photography
Photography; D.C., Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Connecticut
Amy and Kyle Ambrose’s desire for a distinctively Catholic wedding vendor experience began with their own wedding planning, as they spent hours searching online for a photographer who shared their faith and would bring added knowledge and depth to their Mass images.
Several years, photography courses, and newborn shoots with their own daughter later, friends began asking Amy and Kyle to shoot their families and weddings. With a deep understanding and reverence for couples’ desire to find authentically Catholic vendors, Amy and Kyle strive to provide their couples with the sense of mission, prayer, and skill they themselves hoped to find—answering a call and meeting a need.
Love means: Choosing to lay down your life for another.
We root for: Go Yankees!
Favorite part of working on weddings: Getting to know our couples and walk with them during their engagement. For most of our weddings, we feel like we are showing up to celebrate old friends! It's an indescribable honor to stand at the side of the bride and groom throughout their wedding day. We love being able to pray for, and serve, them and their families, and to help keep the focus on the most important thing throughout the day—the reception of the sacrament.
Photography: Nuvoria Studios, c/o Bodamaestra
Boda Maestra
Wedding Coordination; Washington, D.C. Metro Area
Maestra, in Spanish, means masterpiece, and that’s just what Esme Krahn wants your wedding--boda--to be. Esme was working full-time, coordinating weddings on the side, in Mexico when she first met a man named Joe, from Virginia, through online dating. Their initial conversations bloomed into a long-distance, cross-continental relationship that culminated in a Washington, D.C. proposal.
A lifelong Catholic and a lover of the Church and of her native Hispanic culture, Esme channeled her college event coordination experience into wedding planning the first few times she assisted with Hispanic Catholic weddings, and was awakened to a God-given gift.
Now residing stateside with her husband, Esme earned her wedding planning certification through Weddings Beautiful Worldwide and transitioned her career into full-time wedding coordination and design. She’s served the D.C. Metro area through BodaMaestra, offering full and partial wedding planning or management plans, for over a decade.
From Esme: I like to be there for my clients. At the outset of each coordination process, I hold discovery meetings where I find out what's truly important to the bride and groom. No couple is alike, so I take time to find out what each one’s main priorities are, what fears are hunting them and the overall feel they are looking for on their wedding day.
My couples and I are a team where everyone has responsibilities and decisions to make. Our planning meetings are productive and a stress reliever--by the time the wedding day rolls around, the only thing they have to worry about is each other! My couples can trust me 100% that I will troubleshoot any day-of issues and will execute their plans as agreed. Each day is accompanied with a prayer for their life as a couple and for our team's abilities to shine and perform flawlessly.
Soul Creations Photography
Photography; Indiana, Michigan, Tennessee, Illinois and the Midwest. Available for travel nationwide
Sinikka Rohrer's first tried her hand at photography during an underwater photo internship in South Africa. Over the next four years, she worked various roles in the industry, but prayer brought her to a desire to glorify the Lord in her work. Sinikka founded Soul Creations Photography with a unique emphasis on spiritual support for her couples.
This heart for the sacrament of marriage is reflected in Soul Creations's client experience, which has blossomed into full-blown ministry: Sinikka and her team are firm believers in both practical and spiritual support for her couples, happy not just to answer logistical wedding-day questions but to intercede in prayer for her clients and share insights through podcasts and social media.
Favorite saint: Teresa of Calcutta
On my bucket list: Go on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, own a vacation home in Colorado, and photograph an international destination wedding.
Best wedding day memory: the letters that my husband, Alan and I exchanged prior to the ceremony. We sat back to back holding hands and read the letters before Alan prayed over the day and our marriage. All the emotions that were felt from this moment to walking down the aisle were absolute certainty and full communion with God and with man!
OC Media
Photography and Videography; Colorado.
The dress, the meal, the decor, and other wedding details do offer major understanding on the surface. The day that they showed up to a wedding empty-handed, with only their camera in tow, they set out to capture the day in a real, memorable way. Hours of footage and editing later, they presented their first wedding video as a gift to the couple, and the response let fall the Holy Spirit. Brianna and Keenan felt the call to continue developing their video skills and established their business soon after.
The OC in OC Media stands for Oculi Cordis, Latin for "eyes of the heart." The Fitzpatricks' work embodies this invitation to share in the inner life of their clients, to see with more than just what the eye can know.
From Keenan and Brianna: We call OC Media a ministry because we believe it is a tool and gift God has given to us to express to others the beauty that exists in their life--a beauty that is an undeniable gift from their Creator. So many moments in life, whether it's a marriage, graduating from high-school, or a baby's first steps are opportunities for us to encounter our God, ourselves, others, and the world around us in a profound way.
We desire to convey this by engaging in others' lives through relationship and by capturing moments that will hopefully be constant reminders of the giftedness of this life!
We also desire to develop real relationships with each of our clients. When we take clients, we are not just contracting a job with them, we want to get to know the couple or the individual beforehand and continue that relationship after their session. This, we believe, is the call of every human being: to encounter another in a real way.
If we are to truly capture events and important moments in people's lives, we need to know who we are capturing. We're eager to learn about each person's dreams, desires, wants, needs, loves, and even pains. We hope this sets us apart, and we hope and pray others witness the difference.
Our job and privilege is to enlighten others hearts through our eyes and your own. To be enlightened means having greater knowledge of and understanding of something. We hope that you are enlightened by the work we do, to not only see just photography or videography, but to see the beauty, truth, and goodness behind every shot, and in every video. May it open the eyes of your heart!
Photography: Vanessa Velez , c/o The Mantilla Company
The Mantilla Company
Wedding veils; nationwide and international shipping available.
Mantilla simply means “veil” in Spanish, and typically refers to the lacy chapel veils worn by older women at Mass in Spain and other Latin American countries. Many women still choose to wear a Spanish-style veil on their wedding day as a nod to the ancient Catholic tradition of veiling that which is sacred.
While planning her wedding, Gloria Franklin wanted to wear an authentic, Spanish-made mantilla to incorporate her heritage and faith into her bridal look. Her local search for the right veil ended in frustration: the selection was small, the cost was steep, and the mantillas did not have a traditional Spanish look to them. Thanks to her family in Spain, Gloria was able to find the perfect handmade, heirloom-quality mantilla at a quarter of the cost of a similar veil in the US. Through this experience, Gloria was inspired to help other brides find the mantilla-style veil of their dreams without breaking the bank, and The Mantilla Company was born.
Gloria hand-selects each veil that she sells from trusted Spanish vendors, and asks her brides to send her photos of their wedding dress so she can suggest a veil that complements it perfectly. The intricate and diverse lace patterns and varying lengths ensure that each bride can find exactly what she is looking for, and the reasonable prices provide budgetary peace of mind.
From Gloria: I truly feel blessed, honored and flattered to be able to do this work. It is so important to me to express my gratitude to my customers and I try to do that by putting a lot of thought into my selections for each bride. I love receiving emails (and photos!) from satisfied brides, whether it’s after try their mantilla on for the first time or after their wedding.