Lafayette Park

Lafayette Square Park is a lovely Victorian style park about ten minutes from downtown St. Louis. It’s surrounded by huge Victorian mansions, most of which have been lovingly refurbished. The park is surrounded by black wrought iron gate, and the landscaping is absolutely lovely. We also liked that there were things to entertain children there—a pond with ducks to be fed and a small playground; we thought our friends with kids might enjoy having something for them to do before/after the ceremony.

For $300, we were able to reserve a gazebo in the park for four hours. The reservation is made through the City of St. Louis, so it was a little bureaucratic, but nothing too terribly taxing. The rules and regulations are a bit strict (in regards to hanging any decorations, lighting, sound, etc), but since we were married in the afternoon (and used weighted balloons as decorations), they really didn’t concern or bother us too much.

The gazebo is small, but looks out over a beautiful small pond with a large bridge over it. The grounds leading from the gazebo down to the pond are absolutely resplendent with color; the flowers the park plants are truly lovely, especially in the fall. It’s one of the reasons we didn’t feel the need to add much in the way of decorations; nature took care of that for us! We incorporated the bridge into our entrance and exit, and it made for some very beautiful pictures (I’ve since learned that this park is a popular site for wedding pictures, understandably so).

We only experienced two problems with the site: One was that they were doing some planting/weeding work the week before our wedding, which we found out kind of by happenstance (we came by for our rehearsal and found a giant mound of dirt next to the gazebo). Fortunately, the dirt was gone the day we arrived to set up for the wedding; workers had left a garden hose out, but we were able to stow it out of site.

The other incident was more a factor of being married in a public place than the park itself…as I was standing by the pond, waiting to begin our procession, two strangers came up to me with a friendly, “Hi! Are you having an event today?” (Uh, no, ladies, I generally hang out near the pond in a full length white gown….). Turns out they had rented the space for the following weekend and wanted to run a soundcheck. I told them, as politely as I could, that they would have to wait until our time was up before doing so (even though, yes, believe it or not, they promised to be quiet). HA!