About
Our goal is to understand our couples from their roots all the way to their stems. Every detail of your big day should be strongly rooted in your love story, and thoughtfully telling that story in event form is what we do. Our couples come in all different forms, and we love them all. From the highly detailed, meticulous dreamers to our all-trusting, unquestioning believers. Our certified wedding planners are dedicated to meeting our clients right where they are.
From your first bridal consultation to the very last email we send, we take a genuine and authentic interest in diving deeper than just surface level in order to understand you down to your very roots. We believe our family-like atmosphere and deep care we take in our clients creates a sense of community, excitement and openness as we plan the biggest day of your life together!
Roots To Stems
We Are
Alayna Mines is Roots to Stems owner, founder, trendsetter, and event design extraordinaire! Alayna is a Certified Wedding Planner by The Bridal Society, and her wedding designs have been featured in many popular publications such as Wedding Chicks, Brides, E! News, Good Morning America, and more.
Alayna's deep love for event planning and design was inspired at a young age by watching her parents run one of the largest event expos in the world. As early as Alayna can remember, she thrived in this fast paced environment and grew up learning what it takes to run highly detailed and meticulous events. Although she was only just a kid, she jumped in as a volunteer alongside other event specialists and excelled early on. Fast forward to her early adult days, Alayna became the Event Director of Stetson University's event planning team, and later began traveling around the United States working as an Event Specialist for a high-end experiential marketing event firm. Alayna has had the privilege of working with some of the world's largest brands like Ford Motor Company, Facebook, Corona, Disney, Universal, MTV, and countless others but her absolute favorite clients are her Roots To Stems couples looking to tell their love story in event form!
With decades of event experience, her hard work and passion powered the birth of her business, Roots to Stems, where she continues to live out her mission of passing on a legacy of kindness & hospitality to all she works with. Alayna now focuses solely on Full Service Design packages, where her love for large-scale events and wedding design can fully shine.
Alayna Mines is Roots to Stems owner, founder, trendsetter, and event designer extraordinaire! Alayna's deep love for event planning and design was inspired by watching her parents as a child run one of the largest event expos in the world. As early as Alayna can remember, she thrived in this fast paced environment and grew up learning what it takes to run highly detailed and meticulous events. Although she was only just a kid, she jumped in as a volunteer alongside other event specialists and excelled early on.
Fast forward to her early adult days, Alayna became the Event Director of Stetson University's event planning team at the age of 20, and later began traveling around the United States working as an Event Specialist for a high-end experiential marketing event firm. Alayna has had the privilege of working with some of the world's largest brands like Ford Motor Company, Facebook, Corona, Disney, Universal, MTV, and countless others. Her leadership experience in running highly detailed projects and fast paced events, created a passion for planning - which inspired her to focus her skillset on the creative and ever-changing bridal industry.
Alayna enthusiastically jumped headfirst into taking on internships and wedding specific roles before starting her own company, Roots to Stems. Her hard work and passion powered her business growth and Roots to Stems grew exponentially. She now focuses solely on Full Service packages where her love for large-scale events and design can fully shine.
Alayna is a Certified Wedding Planner by The Bridal Society, and has been featured in many popular publications such as Wedding Chicks, Brides, E! News, Good Morning America, and more. Alayna understands the importance of community and teamwork and has developed countless business relationships and friendships with incredible wedding professionals around the US such as florists, photographers, videographers, wedding venues, bridal and tuxedo shops and more. Alayna's mission is to stay humble, and pass on a legacy of kindness and hospitality to all she works with.
Certified | Lead Wedding Planner | Owner & Chief of Events
Alayna Mines
Nora is one of our veteran Lead Planners on the Roots to Stems team focusing on Month of / Day of Coordination and Partial Planning services. Nora’s overwhelming passion for event and wedding planning began in high school where she volunteered as an event coordinator. From that point forward, she knew she wanted to continue on the adventure of working in the event industry!
Nora graduated from UCF Rosen College of Hospitality and has devoted over 10 years of hard work and passion to the event and hospitality industry. Nora has had the opportunity to work in Massachusetts as a wedding coordinator at the historical landmarks like Martha’s Vineyard, and has had her hand in the planning process at various hotels and convention centers including some of Florida’s most popular venues.
Before joining the team at Roots To Stems, Nora worked in corporate events for a Destination Management Company servicing high-end clients from all over the US. Nora’s attention to details, incredible memory (seriously, she doesn’t forget anything!) and dedication to her clients has helped her build an extremely positive reputation amongst venues, clients, catering companies, florists and all she works with here in the Orlando area.
Certified | CMP | Lead Wedding Planner
Nora Surrena
Ivy is one of the fabulous Lead Planners for Roots to Stems, as well as the team's Operations Manager! Chances are, Ivy has been your first point of contact on the RTS team, learning and getting to know every single one of our couples! Her ability to strategically create your custom wedding planning package and understand your unique wedding planning needs makes her the MVP of the RTS Operations team!
Ivy is a natural leader who is always looking for ways to charge forward to make things spectacular, whether that’s for the business, for her couples, or for her team. She has a “team first” mentality and also provides planner training sessions for our community as well as jumps into interviewing new team members. She is excellent at multitasking and loves to see a detailed plan come together seamlessly.
Ivy has been in hospitality for over 10 years! She loves to learn new skills and has a "do whatever it takes" attitude. Her favorite part about weddings is seeing the couple's vision come to life and her main focus is ensuring that they have the absolute best day! Ivy focuses on Full Service Design packages as well as Partial Planning packages where her expertise can shine.
LEAD WEDDING PLANNER| Director of Culture & Operations
Ivy Myers
Haleigh is one of our incredible Lead Wedding Coordinators helping execute dream weddings for our clients! Haleigh's specialty package is our Partial Package, where she loves to spend more quality rime with her clients.
Haleigh’s love for weddings stemmed from hosting and participating in family get togethers but claims that her true “fire” for events comes from participating in a unique Disney Event’s college program during her time at Valencia College. Haleigh loved participating in these highly detailed, fast paced events enjoying the rewarding feeling of watching every detail come together. Haleigh started working towards furthering her event career by taking advantage of the opportunity to work events in the downtown Orlando area as well as the Orange County Convention Center during her time in college. Haleigh also has years of experience working exclusively at one of the top venues in Winter Park executing styled shoots, business dinners and of course, weddings! More than she can count! Which gives her a leg-up for clients needing more help with venue related questions.
For Haleigh, events have never been about just “making it happen” - it’s about taking the clients imagination, transforming their imagination into a vision, and finally, making that vision a reality!
LEAD WEDDING PLANNER
Haleigh Garza
Kait is one of our amazing Assistant Wedding Coordinators at Roots To Stems, focusing on helping our Lead Planners execute incredible weddings for our clients.
Kait became passionate about creating opportunities to gather family and friends together in her early adult years. She believes and understands that as the world continues to spin, life can sometimes whisk you away and with that, we can lose touch from each other. Kait believes that weddings and events are places where family and loved ones can regain connectivity. This thought of deeply connecting with loved ones through events ignited Kait’s desire to assist in coordinating weddings - to be a part of bringing loved ones and families together to connect.
Kait’s desire to deliver this opportunity to her clients is what takes Kait’s empathy and coordinating skills to the next level.
Assistant Coordinator
Kait Valade
Alexa is another RTS Assistant Wedding Coordinator, leading our scoreboard in the amount of events assisted this year! This girl tops the charts assisting over 40% of our RTS couples weddings this past year, focusing on making the magical day run smoothly and efficiently! Can you say qualified? With her amount of event hours, hands-on working experience on the event floor? We think YES!
Alexa’s love for event planning came at a very young age of taking on the task of coordinating events and get-togethers for her friends and family! Her creative eye comes into play when she is on site capturing behind the scene footage, putting the finishing touches on event tables, and being a FORCE alongside our Lead Planners.
Alexa loves how weddings create a sacred atmosphere for community and connection and are such a connective space for everyone to come together and be one, where everyone can come together to be one united family. Alexa’s go getter and hardworking attitude is what takes her coordinating skills to the next level!
ASSISTANT COORDINATOR
Alexa Andrioff
Our newest Assistant, Shelby Opitz, is your go-to girl for anything PARTY! She’s the first one to bring you custom balloons on your birthday, give you the best song recommendations to get guests on the dance floor, get crafty with DIY’s, and isan all around good friend and advocate for fun!
Her background in Business Administration from Florida Southern Collegegives her a strong sense for working with clients and vendors alike, and her untraditional background in insurance and personal injury primed her for the attention to detail you need and WANT in a wedding planner (especially when it comes to contracts and negotiating). Need someone to catch the details in the small print? Shelby is your girl!
Shelby’s wedding industry experience came to the forefront when she shifted gears into bridal fashion, working for a luxury bridal salon in the Central Florida area where she interacted daily in assisting brides find their dream gowns! Shelby is passionate about executing your unique vision and strives to bring ease and happiness to the wedding day… And recently, planning her own wedding only amplified this desire to bring joy!
