OTTAWA WEDDING // F10 STUDIO

Jul 2

Weddings are a beautiful celebration of love, commitment, and coming together of two families. It's a special day to honour traditions, cultures, and heritage while also creating new memories with the people we love most. Elodie and Shaquille show us exactly this, by incorporating their individual backgrounds into each element of their special day captured by F10 Studio.

Photographer, Michael, from F10 Studio shares with us an interview for this week’s featured couple, Elodie and Shaquille.

Do you mind sharing a bit of your love story and how you started your journey together? We first met on Caribana Day through Shaquille‘s dad. He began sparking up conversation with me while watching the parade. Shaquille’s dad introduced me to Shaquille. We greeted each other, exchanged names and went our separate ways. Shaquille’s dad convinced me to take his phone number and encouraged me to contact him later that day. That was the beginning of our 8-month long distance friendship.

What was your vision for your wedding day? Our vision for our wedding day was to ensure we incorporated both cultures, families and our natural selves to the fullest. That meant the food, music, decor and pictures had to display this. Our vendors did a wonderful job highlighting this.

What was the inspiration behind your wedding theme or colour scheme? Shaquille’s background is Jamaican, while Elodie’s is Haitian. Our theme was to highlight this mainly through the food and music. We ensured that the food served was traditional Jamaican and Haitian foods. We booked two different DJs that we knew could bring out the best music for each culture and hired an MC who could speak the language of everyone present (English, French & Creole). The colour scheme was chosen to highlight the colour that compliments Shaquille the best, navy blue. Accents of gold and ivory were also included.

Can you describe the wedding ceremony and any special traditions or rituals you included? Our wedding ceremony was held at our church, All Nations Full Gospel Church Ottawa. We did not perform any special traditions or rituals for our ceremony.

What were your favourite moments from your wedding day? Realistically there is not a single moment that we could choose out of the many amazing moments that we experienced that day. To the getting ready process, the ceremony and vows, the limo and pictures in the park, the reception and speeches, the food, games and dancing. The entire wedding day was a moment that we will cherish.

Can you describe your wedding dress and suit? How did you choose your wedding attire? The wedding suit was based off of Shaquille’s favourite colour, navy blue. Shaquille had two suits, one custom-made with his name on the black suit and Elodie’s name on the blue suit. A pattern was necessary to the design of the suit so a black velvet print was chosen as the accent. Elodie’s dress was chosen for the way it complimented her essence. It was a spaghetti strap, semi-sweetheart neckline, mermaid-style dress with embellished with rhinestones and pearls. Elodie’s dress was the 8th and the very last dress that she tried on and said yes to.

How did you choose your wedding venue? What made it special to you? We chose the venue keeping in mind our want to invite as many family and friends as we wanted. What made The Glebe Community Centre special to us was the fact that it was completely Do it yourself (DIY) and therefore became a wedding project that allowed us to have a true dream wedding with all of the pieces we wanted to incorporate with very little restriction.

What did you look forward to the most on your wedding day?
Elodie: I looked forward to having both families gathered to celebrate our union and becoming Mrs. Gordon.
Shaquille: I looked forward to the food, taking pictures and meeting Elodie’s extended family.