A Victorian Venue

While working as an executive chef at a restaurant owned by Michael Jordan in Washington, DC, James convinced the general manager to hire Jennifer as a sales manager.

The two immediately hit it off.

“I remember telling my friends that the chef was incredible, that he was from Philly, just like me, and talked with his hands, just like me,” recalls Jennifer, an event planner and founder of LHI Events. “We were friends for years.”

About two years after James moved to Chicago, Jennifer also relocated to the Windy City.

“Our courtship was really a long friendship that blossomed into something more,” Jennifer says. “It is based almost entirely on the fact that we both eat, sleep and breathe the hospitality industry. We always joke around that if we didn’t ‘talk shop’ we would have nothing to talk about.”

One winter evening in Montreal, Canada, James took Jennifer on a romantic walk through a snowy park. Her first thought was that James was about to start a snowball fight. “When he had me sit down on a bench and then went down on one knee, I thought he was making a snowball,” Jennifer says. “I started making one behind my back. When he raised his arm up, I did the same. His hand had a ring in it. Mind had a snowball. Fortunately, I saw the ring at the last minute and was able to focus on him saying, ‘Will you marry me?’ in French. I said Oui!”

Jennifer and James couldn’t think of a more romantic holiday to marry on than Halloween.

The bride and groom exchanged vows at midnight following a Victorian-style masquerade ball at the School of the Art institute. Two massive gold-framed mirrors and candelabras stood before the couple during the ceremony, paying tribute to the Victorian legend that if you hold a candle and gaze into a mirror at midnight on Halloween, the person you are to marry will appear behind you.

“What a lot of people don’t realize is that during the Victorian era, Halloween was actually a romantic holiday,” Jennifer explains. “There were a lot of superstitions around getting married on Halloween.”
When it came to her attire, Jennifer chose a custom-made purple taffeta dress with 100-year-old jet-black beading, embroidery and lace.

“My dress was a cross between a Victorian ball gown and a promenade dress,” Jennifer says. “The pattern was based on dress patterns from 1895.”

In place of a veil, Jennifer wore a Victorian-style headdress with peacock and ostrich feathers and a lovely jeweled vintage broach.
“I think my husband would have been disappointed if he had seen a regular old wedding dress,” Jennifer says. “He knows my personality. Being an event planner, I’m not going to go halfway on something.”
As part of their ceremony, Jennifer and James incorporated a Celtic Hand fasting ritual that involved wrapping ribbons of various colors and significance around the bride and grooms wrists in a Celtic Love Knot while they held hands.

“This is where the phrase ‘Tying the Knot’ originated,” Jennifer says.

The couple’s masquerade ball reception included authentic Victorian card and parlor games such as apple bobbing, “bowls of fortune”, “ving-et-un” or modern day blackjack and baccarat.  Actors dressed in 18th century attire of white wigs and long embroidered coasts helped guests choose hand-painted Venetian-style masks for the masquerade portion of the reception, with the female guests also receiving replica 1895 “dance cards.”  The dance cards, distributed in booklet form, included place cards and programs and listed various dances for the evening.

During the cocktail hour, performers from Red Moon Theater served appetizers while wearing masks and gothic theatrical attire. Modeled after a traditional Victorian dinner party, centerpieces included claw foot silver bowls filled with fresh flowers, fruit and vegetables and large hurricane globed silver candelabras with flowers in the center. Silver-edged glassware and china completed the look.

“We also had jack-o-lanterns on all the bars and the wine bottle labels were covered with old-fashioned ‘poison’ labels,” the bride says.

Guests dined on a scrumptious three-course menu that included butternut squash soup, triple crème Camembert and country pate and braised short ribs with ratatouille filled socca crepes as a vegetarian option. Dessert featured caramel apples with walnuts, port wine cinnamon poached apples and an apple crème brulee served in hallowed out crabapples. Later in the evening, guests were treated to mini sorbet bites wrapped in candy wrappers and apple cider cinnamon sugar donuts.

The bride and groom left the celebration immediately following their ceremony.

“The reception continued for another hour,” Jennifer says. “We were gone. We got married at midnight and walked right out and down Michigan Avenue. It was deserted except for a few costumed people.”

Plan the wedding you want and don’t worry so much about what your guests will think or like.

In the end it’s just a party and who doesn’t like parties?

Something Old
The ring Jennifer’s father gave her mother when Jennifer was born

Something New
Special K protein shakes

Something Borrowed
An angel coin for good luck from Jennifer’s best friend

Something Blue
Blue ribbon