Andrew Kragie and Hannah Brown at the Duke University Chapel in 2018.Joe Payne
Andrew Kragie likes to say he met his wife through, got engaged on top of, and got married inside the Duke University Chapel.
Kragie, who graduated in 2015, was introduced to his now-wife, Hannah Brown, through a Methodist student group. They grew close on a chapel-sponsored service trip and started dating. 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
Or subscribe now to read with unlimited access for less than $10/month.
Don’t have an account? Sign up now.
A free account provides you access to a limited number of free articles each month, plus newsletters, job postings, salary data, and exclusive store discounts.
If you need assistance, please contact us at 202-466-1032 or help@chronicle.com.
Andrew Kragie likes to say he met his wife through, got engaged on top of, and got married inside the Duke University Chapel.
Kragie, who graduated in 2015, was introduced to his now-wife, Hannah Brown, through a Methodist student group. They grew closer on a chapel-sponsored service trip and started dating. 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. Afterward, “she pretty much had to carry me down,” Kragie said. “I had run out of energy.”
Then, to secure a coveted slot for a chapel wedding, Kragie took part in a tradition more closely associated with Duke basketball: tenting. Kragie asked a friend to camp out about a week before sign ups opened for his and Brown’s desired month: June 2018. 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. (“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 and Brown are two of the countless people who get married on college campuses each year. For many couples, the role their alma mater played in their own development or in their romance is a big draw — every corner of campus, as Kragie puts it, is “imbued with meaning and memories and nostalgia.”
ADVERTISEMENT
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. 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.
While that argument for hosting weddings is less than romantic, colleges promise prospective bookers that their nuptials will be magical. 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. Stunning.” Harvard University’s events-management web page for weddings strikes a tone that is very, well, Harvard. “Few settings” can match the Ivy League institution’s “grandeur, style, and history.”
Andrew Kragie camped out for three days to sign up for the chapel at Duke. Courtesy of Andrew Kragie
Getting married on campus often comes with restrictions, religious or otherwise. At Meredith College, in Raleigh, N.C., serving alcohol at a reception requires permission from the president’s office. Tossing flower petals, real or artificial, is “strictly FORBIDDEN” both inside and outside the chapel at Rollins College in Winter Park, Fla. Stanford University’s Weddings FAQ web page is a symphony of “No”s. Can guests take photos during the ceremony? Nope. Can the newlyweds form a receiving line? Nay. Can celebratory bubbles be blown? Not a chance.
Until recently, Ginny Watkins scheduled all weddings on Meredith College’s campus — the vast majority of which are for alumni. She said she liked seeing how a couple or a wedding planner could reimagine Jones Chapel in a way she’d never seen before. But it could be stressful when they wanted to do something that was prohibited. “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. Bubbles, for example, leave a residue. Sparklers could start a fire.
ADVERTISEMENT
Occasionally, Watkins said, people were very “insistent” when it came to booking the chapel for a specific date. Unfortunately for those people, “I can be about as insistent as a bride can,” Watkins said. “If we don’t have availability, I’m pretty firm on that.”
“People will push,” said Sandy Hauck, director of wedding ministry at St. Francis Xavier College Church, located on the campus of Saint Louis University. She remembers one father of the bride who wanted to walk his daughter down the aisle to the song “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.” Hauck and the music director explained to him that a secular song was a no go. But he would not let it drop. “I finally said, ‘Here’s what we can do for you: We can give you a full refund on your church fee. Because we simply can’t do this,’” Hauck said. The man then asked what would happen if, say, in the middle of the procession, all of the guests stood up and started singing the song. Thankfully for Hauck, that did not happen.
Another time, Hauck told a mother of the bride that the ceremony time she wanted had already been booked. The woman, who was from a prominent St. Louis family (Hauck would not reveal the name) came back with, “Do you not understand that we are the Doe family, like the Does of St. Louis?” Hauck did not budge. Later, she learned that the woman had somehow discovered the identity of the bride who had secured the coveted time slot and tried to bribe her to change it. (Of course, that mother-in-law is an exception in Hauck’s 10 years as director. Others, she said, have been lovely.)
College Church weddings are in high demand. Once, Hauck fielded a call from a freshman at Saint Louis University who asked to put her name on the wait list. There is no such list, but prime wedding months typically book a year and a half to two years out. Hauck asked the student when she planned on getting married. Perhaps in eight to nine years, the student replied. She wasn’t even in a relationship at the time.
“I had to put my mom hat on and let her know that, really, she was OK,” Hauck said. “If she wanted to get married at College Church when the time came, I’m sure that there would be a time available for her. She just needed to finish her degree and hopefully meet somebody wonderful.”
ADVERTISEMENT
At the University of Notre Dame, wedding slots used to open up on a Monday in March for the entire following calendar year. It was dubbed “Basilica Monday.” Engaged couples would ask their friends and family members to dial the same phone number over and over until one lucky caller got through. And there was no call-waiting, remembers Marcie Wolbeck, who, in 2006, wrangled more than 25 people to help her and her then-future husband get an ideal wedding slot.
I can be about as insistent as a bride can. If we don’t have availability, I’m pretty firm on that.
Now, wedding dates at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart can be reserved online, within a two-year window — a big improvement on a system that was “stressful on every person involved,” said Kate Barrett, director of liturgy in campus ministry at Notre Dame.
Duke, too, changed its wedding reservation process. It established an email-only sign-up system during the Covid-19 pandemic, making tenting a thing of the past.
For Ginger Fay, getting married at Duke not only allowed her and her husband to celebrate the important role the university played in their lives — she got a bachelor’s and master’s degree at Duke and had worked in the admissions office; he got his Ph.D. there — but they were able to symbolize what their marriage would be: a relationship of compromise.
They came from different worlds. “My parents expected and wanted me to go to college,” Fay said. “His dad wanted him to hang wallpaper.” Fay is Roman Catholic, and her husband is Jewish. Duke’s chapel allows weddings of all faiths. So they were married on an altar under a homemade huppah by a Catholic priest, who wore a yarmulke knitted by the groom’s mother.
ADVERTISEMENT
Noreen Brittenham is a member of the first fully co-ed undergraduate class at Fordham College at Rose Hill, one of the nine colleges and schools that today make up Fordham University. She enrolled in the fall of 1974 and later lived in a dormitory across from the University Church. Every Saturday, she and her roommates would peer out the window to watch the weddings. “It was like our sports,” Brittenham said. The year after she graduated, Brittenham got married in that church. On her wedding day, she stepped out of her limo and waved to the students she knew would be watching from their dorm rooms. Their cheers made her smile.
How much of an ordeal was it to snag the venue? No ordeal at all. “We just walked in and said, ‘Hey, whaddya got?’”
EmmaPettit is a senior reporter at The Chronicle who covers the ways people within higher ed work and live — whether strange, funny, harmful, or hopeful. She’s also interested in political interference on campus, as well as overlooked crevices of academe, such as a scrappy puppetry program at an R1 university and a charmed football team at a Kansas community college. Follow her on Twitter at @EmmaJanePettit, or email her at emma.pettit@chronicle.com.