“People will push,” said Sandy Hauck, director of wedding ministry at St. “If we don’t have availability, I’m pretty firm on that.” Unfortunately for those people, “I can be about as insistent as a bride can,” Watkins said. Occasionally, Watkins said, people were very “insistent” when it came to booking the chapel for a specific date. “You kind of have to step in and say, ‘I know this is your vision, but we have to change it just a little bit to make it fit within the rules,’” Watkins said. But it could be stressful when they wanted to do something that was prohibited. She said she liked seeing how a couple or a wedding planner could reimagine Jones Chapel in a way she’d never seen before. Until recently, Ginny Watkins scheduled all weddings on Meredith College’s campus - the vast majority of which are for alumni. Can celebratory bubbles be blown? Not a chance. Can the newlyweds form a receiving line? Nay. Can guests take photos during the ceremony? Nope. Stanford University’s Weddings FAQ web page is a symphony of “No”s. Tossing flower petals, real or artificial, is “ strictly FORBIDDEN” both inside and outside the chapel at Rollins College in Winter Park, Fla. At Meredith College, in Raleigh, N.C., serving alcohol at a reception requires permission from the president’s office. Getting married on campus often comes with restrictions, religious or otherwise. “Few settings” can match the Ivy League institution’s “grandeur, style, and history.”Ĭourtesy of Andrew Kragie Andrew Kragie camped out for three days to sign up for the chapel at Duke. Stunning.” Harvard University’s events-management web page for weddings strikes a tone that is very, well, Harvard. A University of Michigan at Ann Arbor web page promotes the elegance of a winter celebration: “Holly berries? Red ribbon? White linens and our red velvet chairs? Simply. While that argument for hosting weddings is less than romantic, colleges promise prospective bookers that their nuptials will be magical. A 2019 Atlantic article notes that while campus weddings “aren’t exactly big money makers,” they’re “apparently lucrative enough for schools to create stand-alone websites advertising their venues, detailing their wedding packages.” A higher-ed consultant told the outlet that alternative revenue sources can look particularly attractive in an era of declining public funding and enrollment. Meaning, memories, and nostalgia are powerful marketing tools for colleges that have entered the wedding industry - something they are perhaps more inclined to do in an uncertain financial climate. (“While we do not encourage camping out on Chapel grounds to sign up for a wedding date in the Chapel, it seems to have become a part of the ‘Duke experience,’” reads Duke guidance from several years ago.) Kragie described the lengths he went to as “a thousand percent worth it.” Kragie soon took over and lived out of a tent for three days, scoping for free food on campus and ducking into the Divinity School to use the bathroom. Kragie asked a friend to camp out about a week before sign ups opened for his and Brown’s desired month: June 2018. Then, to secure a coveted slot for a chapel wedding, Kragie took part in a tradition more closely associated with Duke basketball: tenting. Afterward, “she pretty much had to carry me down,” Kragie said. Years later, during a church service at the chapel, he excused himself to dash up the bell tower’s 239-step staircase (ascending can cause “nausea, dizziness, fear of heights, and or claustrophobia,” warns a Duke web page) to toss rose petals on the roof, where he soon proposed to an unsuspecting Brown. They grew closer on a chapel-sponsored service trip and started dating. Kragie, who graduated in 2015, was introduced to his now-wife, Hannah Brown, through a Methodist student group. Andrew Kragie likes to say he met his wife through, got engaged on top of, and got married inside the Duke University Chapel.
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