What happens when a former NFL reporter marries an NFL coach...

Indianapolis Colts Wedding – Former Colts Reporter and Assistant Coach are Married by Head Coach Frank Reich in Mississippi – Angela Lally Photography 8

Classic, timeless & with an adorable meet-cute. If you’re looking for a little romantic tale today you’re going to love this love story that started on a football field…

Reporting for the Indianapolis Colts, bride Caroline heard her future husband – a member of the Colts coaching staff – before she even saw him. Being southern herself caught in the Midwest, it was Parks’ endearing Mississippi accent that ‘caught her ear’.

An adorable love story later (which you can read on below) when it was time to say ‘I do’ it was only appropriate that Colts Head Coach, Frank Reich, officiate their wedding.

NFL meet-cute aside, their wedding is catnip for lovers of timeless romance. Taking place at Parks’ family residence in Mississippi, the couple achieved the most upscale backyard wedding we can remember. (We’ve chatted a bit about how to make your at-home wedding plenty fancy here).

Our Love Story

Parks and I met in July of 2018 while both working for the Indianapolis Colts. At the time, I was the team reporter and he had just been hired as the assistant to the head coach. The first time we ever met was during a press conference for the head coach. Although I didn’t see Parks first, I heard him! I am from South Carolina and while living in the Midwest I didn’t hear many familiar southern accents. So, when I heard a deep, Mississippi southern drawl, whipped my head around to find Parks standing up against a wall in the back of the press conference. From that moment on, a wonderful friendship began.

We spent the next eight months getting to know one another as friends (although, no one believed us to be “just friends”. Ha!) It wasn’t until I got a new job with the Carolina Panthers and would be moving to Charlotte, NC that we began thinking about life without one another – and that just wasn’t an option! So, after living in the same city for almost a year as friends, we started dating two weeks before I left Indianapolis for Charlotte. Crazy, we know! After nine months of dating, we were engaged, and the rest is history!

Parks did and AMAZING job with our proposal! He truly knocked it out of the park and it is such a sweet memory to us and our families. We wrote about it here.

The Venue & Decor

Parks and I both wanted an intimate wedding experience with just our families and closest friends. We wanted every detail to matter. So, we did just that!

The first big piece of the puzzle was our venue and for that, we simply had to as the parents of the groom. The Frazier’s family home in Corinth, Mississippi provided the beautiful, romantic, intimate, garden feel we wanted for our wedding. Not to mention, we loved the idea of a “backyard” wedding.

The rest was simply planning around their already immaculate backyard. We kept the decorations to a minimum, not to take away from the surrounding gardens and pool, but to achieve the overly romantic garden feel we wanted, we went heavy with the florals! Our full floral alter provided the perfect backdrop for our vows and the reds and pinks of the arch continued throughout the entire yard.

The Dresses & Attire

To continue to the theme of the wedding, I needed some help from my bridesmaids. I knew I didn’t want my girls to wear cookie-cutter bridesmaid dresses on our big day. So, I asked them to wear a family of colors with different styles of dresses and textures to add to the garden theme – and they did just that! With a large wedding party, I knew their personalities and style would show up in their dresses and the collection of all the different colors helped make our night even more cohesive without going too matchy-matchy.

As for the groomsmen, we simply asked them to wear a navy suit they already owned with no tie (which they were thankful for in the late-June Mississippi heat). Parks wore a custom-made, three-piece suit with a white tie to differentiate himself. We loved seeing everyone’s own style!

The Local Vendors

For our vendors, it was important to us to keep all vendors local to Parks’ hometown if possible. Our cake, caterer, florist, harpist, soloist, and rentals were all local to northeast Mississippi. All the planning and decisions leading up to our big day really came together and made our intimate, garden wedding a reality.

Special Detail

When Parks and I were friends, I mentioned to him how when a friend of mine had gotten married, her husband gave her a journal he started in preschool addressed to his “future wife”. I told him how I couldn’t imagine a more romantic and intentional gesture from a husband as a wedding gift. Unbeknownst to me, because of that story, Parks began his own journal to his future wife.

The first entry actually reads: “A friend of mine told me about…” Fast forward about six months and we begin to date. Then fast forward another six months and the “Dear Future Wife” began to read “Dear Caroline”.

On our wedding day, Parks gives me the journal a friend told him about…he gave me his future wife journal! To say I was shocked and in tears would be an understatement! I wrote in the journal all the way leading up to hanging it to me and it sits on my nightstand to this day.

Something that was “So Us”

Our wedding celebration started on the Wednesday before our Saturday wedding. We invited all our wedding party to travel to Corinth, MS a few days early in order to spend more time together.

We hosted a welcome “low country boil” at the groom’s parents’ house on Wednesday night and treated Thursday as our bachelor and bachelorette days. The guys headed to a nearby lake and the girls laid by the pool all day. Thursday night the wedding parties came together and spent the evening getting to know one another and sharing their favorite stories about Parks and I. Friday was the bridal luncheon, rehearsal dinner, and post toast party.

By the time Saturday arrived, our wedding parties really knew one another and made for an even more fun wedding day! Our friends who met that weekend now hang out and visit one another without Parks and I even being present! That means the world to us!

The Photography

It was very important to Parks and me that our photographer capture our day in a real classic and timeless way. We both enjoy looking back on our grandparents’ and parents’ weddings through their photos and wanted to give our children and grandchildren the same opportunity.

When we were told about Angie Lally Photography by a member of our wedding party, we instantly fell in love with her look and approach to capturing weddings. Then we got to know Angie through our consultation and knew she would be the perfect fit for us. The photos speak for themselves! But what you may not know just from looking through our album is how amazing Angie and her staff were on the wedding day. We worked closely to time out our day and Angie made sure we stayed on time without feeling rushed. She handled our large wedding party of 30(!!) beautifully and gave us memories we’ll forever cherish through her photos. She took the time to get to know us as a couple and capture what is important to both Parks and I. As you can see from our album, she nailed it!

Advice to Other Couples

There are thousands of vendors, websites, registries, and opinions for you to cling to throughout your planning process but at the end of the day, it’s about your vows to one another. Getting married during a pandemic quickly made Parks and I realize that if we had to cancel vendors or have no guest, we would, so long as on June 27th, 2020 we became man and wife. All you need is your pastor, your fiancé, and yourself. If you remember what the wedding day is truly about, all the extras become way less stressful to plan! Enjoy this season of life, it passes so quickly!

The Reception

Our ceremony started in the evening followed by a cocktail hour while Parks and I finished up with photos and then a sit-down family style dinner. After cutting the cake and toasts, the party went on into the night under market lights and a black and white checkered dance floor. We drove away in the groom’s father’s Mercedes convertible decorated by the wedding parties.

The Honeymoon

We went to Unico in Rivera Maya. It was a beautiful, intimate all-inclusive resort that was the perfect ending to our wedding celebration. We would highly recommend traveling to Unico!