Couple Has Virtual Wedding At Fairchild's 'The Garden Of Love'

CORAL GABLES (CBSMiami) - It was mostly a magical wedding day for bride Tiffanny Lorente and her groom Wadih Pazos at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden last Saturday under blue skies in a beautifully manicured green space.

The only thing missing? The guests.

Aside from the bride and groom, those in attendance were the groom's three sons, his sister who officiated the wedding, a photographer, and a harpist.

Fairchild recently launched its virtual wedding program called "Garden of Love."

"What we're trying to do is create a program that is really easy and stress-free for the brides and grooms because they've got enough stress going on in the world around them. So, it's almost turn key, we offer both wedding services and photography and then the highlight is we do this amazing professional live stream of their ceremony," said Fairchild Garden's Director of Garden Design, Kelly Ramer.

CBS4's Lisa Petrillo asked the couple how they first felt when they realized their wedding plans would have to be changed because of the pandemic.

"To be fully transparent I was devastated at the idea that I was probably going to have to cancel my wedding this year. We were given the opportunity to have it in Maui and now we had to postpone it or figure something new out, " Lorente said.

"We were really mopey, to be honest, the whole few weeks. The whole months of April and May we had that impending doom of having to postpone, " Pazos said.

But then they heard about the "Garden of Love" program.

"We were supposed to get married in July, then the uncertainty with the travel, the safety for our family. We had to weigh the options there. Then we discovered the Fairchild virtual wedding through hunting," Lorente explained.

The couples said their "I do's" while the ceremony was streamed live for all the guests.

"Then a Zoom call for cutting the cake and a toast, to mimic as much as possible a real wedding. The difference is, of course, that everyone is participating virtually online instead of being there," she said.

They took pictures all through the lush and lovely grounds, and in the end, even though the Maui nuptials were nixed, the newlyweds are thankful for each other and a wedding they will never forget.

"It was beautiful," said Pazos.

" They paid attention to every detail. They made sure that we had everything as close to Hawaii as possible. All our flowers, the foliage there looks a lot like Maui and so it was just like, you know, life is funny and we got to have our ceremony as close as you can get to Hawaii in Miami" explained Lorente.

Click Here for more information on the Garden of Love.