This Chase Park Plaza Affair Was Coined the Royal Wedding of St. Louis

Erin Lepperd
October 4, 2018
Categories: Real Weddings, The Blog, Traditional Elegance

When you share a wedding date with Meghan + Harry, it’s a given that your Big Day will forever be coined “The Royal Wedding of St. Louis”. And this celebration photographed by Lauren Muckler is so living up to its name. Awash with garden-esque details designed by Megan Rusch Soirees and loads of blooms crafted by The Special Event Florist, this affair is bringing Spring to the ballroom.

Michael and I had been dating for 9 years before we got married, so our wedding day was a long time coming. We also happened to share a wedding date with Harry and Meghan so the whole day it became a running joke that our big day was the Royal Wedding of St. Louis.

I was too excited to get a full night sleep, so I was up bright and early to watch all of the Royal Wedding day coverage and it really helped put me in the spirit for all of the festivities ahead. And because we shared a date with the royals we really strived to make our day as memorable and beautiful as possible.

We currently live in NYC— Michael is a lawyer and I’m a magazine beauty editor— but we’re both from St. Louis and knew we wanted to have our big day happen in our hometown. Planning from afar was overwhelming, but we are so thankful Michael’s mom hired a planner for us when we were seven months out. We had many Skype meetings with our planner Megan, who really got an understanding of the kind of wedding we wanted.

It was important to us that our big day reflect our favorite season (spring), so our goal was to have a sophisticated garden party-like theme. Because weather in the Midwest is always so unpredictable, having the ceremony and reception inside were a must but we wanted outdoor space as well. The Chase Park Plaza was the perfect fit for our reception as it has space with two massive outdoor patios.

And even though everyone was inside, we didn’t want them to feel like it. So one of our must-haves was a floral installation above the dance floor. When a floral chandelier was a no-go due to lower ceiling height, we decided on a mix of string lights, greenery and orchids, which was even prettier than a chandelier!

Other touches personal touches were gold-painted safari animal table number holders as a nod to our engagement in South Africa, a cardboard cut out of us taken on the patio of our reception venue and poppers that were personalized with our monogram and filled with paper crowns, confetti, jokes, whistling lips and bubbles. Another special detail that we’re glad our planner recommended was to tie silk ribbon around our napkins and menu cards— it was such a small and simple element but made such a big impact. Oh and that cake, talk about wedding cake goals!!

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One of my absolute favorite moments of the night was the appearance of our college mascot (the University of Missouri’s Truman the tiger) that Megan and I arranged as a surprise for Michael. The look on his face says it all and the mascot really kept the party going and people on the dance floor. Our wedding truly felt like a fairy tale and we even got our dream send off of sparklers on one of the patios, which are some of our favorite photos of the night. We couldn’t have asked for a more magical day.