Tara & Scott's Jupiter Florida Wedding: Some Stories Really Do Come Full Circle
Updated: Oct 7
There are wedding days where I get home, start backing up cards, and I keep thinking about one little thing somebody said during the day. Tara and Scott's was like that.
Before the ceremony I was around Scott and some of his friends. These are guys who have known him forever, some of them 20 or 30 years. When people know you that long, you really don't have to ask much. Stories just start coming out. Half of them make no sense if you weren't there, which honestly is part of the fun.
Then one of them told me a story from years ago, when Scott was out in Phoenix with Tara. In the middle of a very Scott kind of night, apparently, he looked over and said, "I want to marry that woman." Just like that. Seven years before the wedding. I remember hearing it and thinking, okay, that's a pretty good little story to have on camera before a wedding. I didn't know yet that it was going to come back later.
What’s Ahead:
A Jupiter Florida wedding story that started years earlier
During the ceremony, their officiant started telling the part of the story I hadn't heard yet. Tara and Scott met almost ten years ago. They tried dating for a while, it didn't work at that time, and then a couple of years later life brought them back together. By 2017 they knew something was different. They committed to each other, and somewhere along the way Scott apparently developed this reputation for being able to see the future. At least when it came to Tara. There was even a proposal story that sounded completely like them. Scott planned it during a car unveiling, got down on one knee after giving a speech, and surprised Tara so much that she forgot to say yes. He actually had to ask again. And then came the vows.
Scott went short. Tara did not.
Scott's vows were simple. Tara was his best friend and soulmate. He promised to love her every day, be her rock, her confidant and her best friend. That was pretty much it. Then Tara realized she needed her phone for hers. She laughed, looked at Scott and immediately told him her vows were longer and he was in trouble. He had gone short and sweet. She had a different definition of short. That little exchange was probably one of my favorite parts because it didn't feel like a performance. It felt like them.
Tara talked about getting to marry her best friend, somebody she admired and loved, and then she brought the whole thing right back to the story I had heard before the ceremony. She told Scott he had been right all those years ago when he said he could see the future and knew they would get married someday. And she told him how happy she was that he was right. That was the moment for me. The random story I heard while everybody was hanging around before the ceremony suddenly wasn't random anymore. It had a beginning, and now Tara had just given it an ending right there in her vows.
That's usually the stuff I remember
Of course there were beautiful portraits, family photos, the ceremony, the reception, the speeches, all of it. But when people have known each other this long, and when their friends have known them for decades, the little pieces around the big moments are usually what make the day feel real. You could feel that all day with Tara and Scott. There were old friends everywhere. There were people telling stories that went way back. During the reception one of the toasts talked about how Tara had become part of everything Scott was doing, not just standing next to him, but really being his partner. That made sense after watching the two of them together all day. And that's probably what I liked most about this wedding. Nothing felt like it needed to be forced into some perfect wedding-day story. Their story was already there. You just had to listen to people.
A sentence Scott said years ago. A friend remembered it. The officiant brought it up. Tara answered it in her vows. You can't really plan that for a camera, and you don't need to. Tara and Scott, thank you for letting me be there for it. I hope when you guys watch this years from now you remember the big moments, obviously, but also all the weird little conversations, the jokes, the people around you and all the stuff happening in between. That's usually where the real story is.
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