The Daily Princetonian
Thursday December 12, 2013
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PAGE DESIGN BY SENIOR WRITER LIN KING
WEDDINGS PRINCETON THECHAPEL
weddings 30 per year
hosts about
each costs ceremony about
$2,025
80%
of weddings on campus are
those of alumni every
Chapel ceremony is limited to
ONEHOUR
T
he wait-list to book a wedding at the Princeton University Chapel is legendary. As the old Princeton fairy tale goes, a male student comes to Princeton, has a feeling during his freshman year that he will meet his future wife in the next four years and books the Chapel for his wedding, despite not actually having a girlfriend. That way, when he meets his dream Princeton girl, they can get married without having to wait. Practical and romantic! The legend of the wait list is so common that even alumni calling to book their weddings well in advance expect that their request will be a long shot, Chapel Administrator Liz Powers said. Powers quickly dispelled rumors of the wait-list. “We schedule weddings two years out, so sometimes I’ll hear, oh, you know, there’s a seven-year wait-list, and it just can’t even possibly be because we don’t plan weddings seven years out,” Powers said. The Chapel may be popular, but it is by no means impossible to book for a wedding. The Chapel is available as a venue for weddings 10 months out of the year, with only December and May blocked off for the academic ceremonies, concerts and special events that fill up the Chapel’s schedule at those times. Although wedding slots are limited to 12 p.m. and 3 p.m. on Saturdays during most of the year, with an additional 1 p.m. Sunday slot during the busier summer months, Powers said that booking a wedding at the Chapel is not as competitive as it is rumored to be. There is an application process, but the most daunting part of the application asks for a description of “your connection to the University and why you wish to be married in the Chapel.” The Chapel does around 30 weddings per year. While Powers did not have a specific number of available slots for 2014, it appears that several slots go unfilled. This coming year, there are still slots available for the months of July and August, with the month of June fully booked. Even with these available slots, there is enough interest in booking the Chapel for weddings that only students, alumni, current faculty or staff and children of all of these categories are eligible to be married in
the Chapel. “All kinds of exceptions are asked for, but I’ve not seen exceptions made. The Chapel is appealing to so many who don’t have an affiliation with the Chapel that we try to keep it open for those that do,” Powers said. A wedding in the University Chapel is made that much more special by each couple’s necessary Princeton connection. This rings especially true for alumni couples (the majority of alumni couples contain only one alumnus). Eighty percent of weddings in the Chapel are those of Princeton alumni. Two such Princetonians are recent alumni Sara Hastings ’09 and Daniel Hayes-Patterson ’09. Their strong connection to the University is what brought them to the Chapel when they married on Aug. 3, 2013. Not only do both Hastings and Hayes-Patterson have multiple alumni connections in their families, but they were brought together as students at the University through their work at The Daily Princetonian. Hastings and Hayes-Patterson met during their senior year, when Hastings was the copy editor and HayesPatterson was the photography editor. The Chapel was a natural fit for a wedding venue for them. “My husband and I both have a lot of family connections at Princeton, and Princeton is what brought us together, so it made sense. We never seriously considered any other venues,” Hastings said. But while the Chapel is the ideal wedding venue for some, other Princeton couples find a way to celebrate their connection to the University at their wedding without feeling the need for the Chapel to serve as the backdrop. This was the case for Jennifer Palmquist ’13 and Mack Darrow ’13, who, in a romantic example of how Forbesians form a tightknit community, met during their freshman year in Forbes and are now engaged. Forbes factored very prominently into their engagement — Mr. Darrow “chose a scenic spot overlooking the pond to drop to one knee,” Palmquist said. But for this couple, getting married in the Chapel was not a priority. “We honestly never really See WEDDINGS page s2
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