Abby & Tyler’s Golden Hour Engagement Session at Dickson Azalea Park

Some engagement sessions get built around a couple’s whole weekend. This one got built around a flight.

A Weekend Packed Full of Wedding Planning

Abby and Tyler live in North Carolina, which meant every trip to Florida ahead of their wedding had to work overtime. The weekend of their engagement session was no exception. They kicked things off with a catering tasting with Chef Mike, sat down for a floral consultation with Shy Chic Boutique, and squeezed in a hair and makeup trial with Dolled Up Brides, all before they ever got in front of the camera. By the time golden hour rolled around at Dickson Azalea Park, these two had already put in a full weekend of work toward their upcoming wedding at The Hollow Forever Free.

Why Dickson Azalea Park

Every location we considered first was actually further from Orlando, places like Emerson Point Preserve, Bok Tower Gardens, and Lettuce Lake Park. All three would have given us gorgeous images, but none of them worked with the schedule Abby and Tyler were on. Getting to any of them with enough time to shoot would have meant starting well before the light turned soft and golden, the way we love it for portraits. Staying later to catch that light properly was not an option either, since Abby and Tyler had a flight out of MCO to catch right after.

So we needed something close to the airport that could still deliver real golden hour light on a tight timeline, and Dickson Azalea Park checked every box. We had shot there before, for Sam and Chris’s wedding, so we already knew the space and knew it would come through for us.

Dickson Azalea Park is one of the more unusual spots we shoot in Orlando, and one of the city’s oldest. What is now a quiet, sunken garden tucked into a neighborhood near Thornton Park started out as a natural, spring fed creek that once served as a watering hole for cattle herders passing through the area. State Senator Walter Rose bought the land in 1916 and later set aside five acres around the creek for public use, donating it to the City of Orlando in 1924. In 1935, Works Progress Administration crews built out the park’s stone walls, bridges, and paths, and it was named for Colonel Henry Hill Dickson, credited with bringing azaleas to the city. Almost a century later, it still feels like someone carved an opening out of the neighborhood and dropped a garden into it, this pocket of green, woodsy calm in the middle of Orlando that photographs like it is nowhere near a major city at all.

Golden Light and a Whole Lot of Laughing

Florida heat does not care about your travel schedule, and this session had plenty of it. Despite the temperature, Abby and Tyler were all smiles and full of laughs from start to finish. The late afternoon sun broke through the foliage in exactly the way we hope for on every outdoor session, and this couple made it easy, relaxed with each other, quick to laugh, and completely unbothered by the heat.

Why Shy Chic Boutique Made Sense for an Out of Town Couple

Planning a Florida wedding from North Carolina comes with its own challenges, and it is a big part of why Abby and Tyler brought Shy Chic Boutique on board. Beyond florals, Shy Chic handled the planning and pulled together their entire vendor team, catering, cake, DJ, hair and makeup, rentals, and more, all under one roof. For a couple who could not just swing by in person whenever a decision needed to be made, having one trusted point of contact assembling the whole day made all the difference.

That kind of full service planning is exactly why we’re giving Shy Chic’s whole team a mention here, even though this post is about the engagement session, not the wedding day itself. This is who Abby and Tyler trusted to bring it all together:

A Preview of What Was Coming

This session turned out to be a preview of something bigger. A few months later, Abby and Tyler said their vows on the island ceremony site at The Hollow Forever Free, surrounded by family who flew in from Ohio and Rhode Island. If you want to see how their story continued, check back soon to see the post!

Congratulations Again, Abby and Tyler

Thank you for making time for us in the middle of an already packed weekend. It set the tone for everything that came after.

If you are planning a wedding or engagement session and want to talk photography, we would love to hear from you. See our work and reach out at ying-multimedia.com.