The newly wedded Woodfins, Birmingham Mayor Randall and his wife Kendra, pulled off the wedding of the year in less than one month after a change in plans, culminating with a ceremony on Sunday, Oct. 8.

According to wedding planner Rickquel Garrett, the couple executed the wedding on just 19 days’ notice. Originally, the couple was looking to have a large wedding later this year.

“Mid-September, they came to the conclusion they wanted to have something small and intimate with family and friends,” Garrett told AL.com. “Since we had already started to plan the wedding, it wasn’t very hard to execute.”

Lakita Barron, Garrett’s assistant, said Kendra is a strong woman of faith and realized in pre-marital counseling that they wanted to prioritize their relationship. “It came to them realizing that even though they wanted to cater to the city and to the community, that they wanted to honor the covenant and make sure they set a foundation in order to properly present themselves to the people,” Barron said. “It was more so they wanted to make sure their union was a priority so they can be better for the city.”

The Rev. Thomas Beavers, pastor of New Rising Star Baptist Church, conducted the couple’s premarital counseling.

Creative director and florist Christopher Lauren said once the couple decided not to have a large wedding event, they wanted to go ahead and move forward with having a more intimate private wedding. He said that too many people knew the original date of the wedding, which was Dec. 31, and the event became about pleasing other people.

“Nobody was supposed to know about the end-of-the-year wedding,” Lauren said. “They wanted their privacy. So they wanted to go ahead and have their small, private, intimate wedding.”

The nuptials took place at a private residence overlooking Vulcan in Birmingham with 50 guests of family and friends. The couple was intentional about using vendors that were all located in Birmingham.

Lauren said he had eight days to prepare the flowers for the wedding. He used various types of flowers like Lisianthus, Casablanca Lily, and Snap dragons from various places across the world. “Flowers came from as far as Colombia and Thailand, and the bride’s favorite flower was the Baby Breath.” he said.

Lauren also brought in an old school 1979 Lincoln Town Car for the couple’s sendoff at the end of the night. “The car collector I worked with thought the Lincoln represented Randall’s personality and smoothness,” he said. “You know, he’s real soft spoken and smooth. And the added flowers gave it a feminine touch.”

Some vendors included: Bella’s Bridal for the wedding dress; Suit Supply for the groom’s suit; Christopher Lauren for flowers; Shawn Edwards for catering; K&J’s Elegant Pastries for the wedding cake; Amber Jones, Sweet Jones Delectable Sweets and Treats for cupcakes; DJ Slim Robb for entertainment; Wedding singers Jaeden Henderson and Tanetra Austin, Dave Crenshaw for entertainment; Bold As A Lion Studios for videography; YNOT Images for photography.

The Woodfins aimed to have a classy, elegant feel for the wedding by selecting black and white colors for the event, and asked all guests to wear black for their 30-minute ceremony and subsequent reception.

The bride walked down the aisle with her father to the couple’s favorite song by Janelle Monae, “I Won’t Let Go,” and Mayor Woodfin’s niece Cimara Shackleford performed a ballet dance.

Kristal Bryant, owner of K&J’s Elegant Pastries said Woodfin has been a long time customer, and she’s been creating custom cakes for him over the last five years. However, she only had one week to pull off a cake for the wedding. “It was a crazy wedding weekend because we had five weddings to execute including the mayors,” Bryant said.

She created an all-white, 7-layer vanilla and strawberry shortcake as the wedding cake for the bride and groom. Bryant also included a crest, logo, the “W” charm from Mase Jett Monogram to create the sleek cake.

Lauren mentioned that it took 7 hours to create the spiral flower design for the wedding cake, which had 175 roses.

“Everything turned out beautiful,” Bryant said. “It was small, intimate, but classy.”

Mayor Randall Woodfin and Kendra started dating in 2021. On March 20, Woodfin announced he proposed to Kendra in an Instagram post. In September, the couple had an engagement photoshoot at Barber Motorsports Museum that they shared on social media.

Sunday’s wedding came to a surprise to many close work colleagues like Former U.S. Senator Doug Jones and Birmingham City Councilor Darrell O’Quinn.