There are some things you just can’t control. Plano natives Ashley Kaplan and Chris Sturgeon had been friends since the sixth grade. Over the years, Chris developed feelings for Ashley, but it wasn’t until their senior year of high school that Ashley began to see Chris in a new light, and the pair started dating. “He’s just one of the sweetest guys I’ve ever known,” she says. “It was one of those things where he was still my best friend, but we could also have a romantic relationship.”

Ten years, two college degrees, and a joint move to Los Angeles later, Chris asked Ashley to marry him on a May evening at The Ritz-Carlton in Dallas. Ashley, who plans events for a living at an entertainment-marketing firm in Beverly Hills, knew exactly what she wanted—“I’ve had a wedding Pinterest board since Pinterest came out,” she laughs—and hoped to wed just a few months later. “But I really wanted peonies, and that wasn’t possible with a fall wedding,” she says. “The next best thing was spring.”

So they set a date for May 3, 2015, at the Dallas Arboretum. Ashley eschewed hiring a planner, relying on her own expertise and the help of her creative mom and sister. “I’m a control freak, so I knew I needed to do it to have it done the way I wanted it done,” she says.

What she wanted was a lush, floral-heavy setting that felt natural and not too fussy, and she entrusted the professionals at GRO Floral & Event Design to create it. Ashley had just as clear a vision for her gown. The only problem? It didn’t exist. So Ashley had a family friend create it for her. Everything was going according to plan until April, when Ashley was reminded of the one thing she couldn’t control: the weather. Dallas experienced one of the wettest springs on record, and the contingency plans for their all-outdoor ceremony and reception were less than ideal.

Somehow the weather, just like everything else about the evening, turned out more perfect than even she could’ve planned. Following an interfaith ceremony in the McCasland Sunken Garden and cocktails in the Crape Myrtle Allee, the party moved to the DeGolyer House, where Ashley and Chris kicked things off with their first dance. Not one to leave things to chance, Ashley had arranged for a dance lesson with a former Dancing With the Stars pro. (Chris, who works for Ryan Seacrest Productions, had also enlisted some star power of his own for a video that played at the rehearsal dinner the night prior.)

Though it was hard for Ashley to surrender some control and leave the day-of details to the professionals, she realized she’d hired the right team when she saw the results of their hard work. “Planning things for my career, it’s very difficult for me to hand things off to someone else,” she says. “But when I first saw the reception, I was just like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is exactly what was in my head.’ It was my vision come to life.”

The dance party continued until 10:30 p.m., when it was time for Ashley and Chris to make their exit. But Ashley wasn’t ready for the night to end. Following their getaway, they circled back to the Arboretum so she could take it all in one last time. “I just needed to have a few last moments looking at everything,” she says. “I wanted to do it all over again.