Hey, everybody!
It's John and Stevie Morris here! Yes, you read that right — we're married! Just over a month ago, we celebrated our marriage in St. Louis, Missouri, together with our family and friends who traveled from across the country and around the world.
We were blessed with a joy-filled day, fantastic weather and a ceremony and reception that seemed to come together seamlessly. Check out the highlights in this short video:
Wedding planning was an odd experience for us — it was unlike anything we had done before or will do again. We recognized that the wedding industry is driven by marketing and comparison, but we focused on intentionality and staying true to our roots. Our goal was to celebrate our love story while creating a warm, welcoming and accessible experience for our guests.
Why St. Louis?
St. Louis has been called many things — the Gateway to the West, Rome of the West, Lion of the Valley, Mound City, River City, Chess Capital of the World and even The Lou — but for us, it is simply the place we have chosen to call home.
We did meet (in person) here for the first time. John has had a connection to this city for longer than he has been a wheelchair user. But, more than anything, deciding to celebrate our wedding in St. Louis felt like both a claiming of a new beginning and a continuation of our love story.
Selecting a wedding venue
The Pro-Cathedral of St. John, Apostle and Evangelist became a part of John's life in 2012, when he first moved to St. Louis, and it is now our family's home parish. Celebrating the sacrament of marriage at Mass inside this church, with our priest and our parish community, was a natural choice — we never considered any other.
In addition to being our spiritual home, the pro-cathedral has, for more than 165 years, played a significant role in the history of the Archdiocese of St. Louis. In the late 1800s and for some 20 years, St. John's served as the cathedral church of the archdiocese. It is a historic and venerable church, and one that now features in our own family history.
When we set out looking for a wedding reception venue, we were fortunate to find availability at our first choice, the Missouri History Museum. Located within Forest Park, the museum is one of the top wheelchair accessible attractions in St. Louis and a place where we already held a membership.
Compared to other venues, the museum proved surprisingly affordable (especially after our member discount) and met a key consideration for us in being wheelchair accessible. Having our wedding reception at a history museum was very on brand for us, but especially for John who studied history in college and in graduate school. The replica of Charles Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis aircraft, suspended over the Grand Hall, was truly icing on the cake. "We're a traveling family," as our son Robert likes to say.
Wedding planning around accessibility barriers
When planning any accessible event, one of the first steps is identifying potential accessibility barriers and working out a plan to address them. We covered the obvious ones by selecting an accessible reception venue and working closely with our wedding planner and caterer to meet individual needs, but other concerns required additional consideration:
- Sanctuary access: The Pro-Cathedral was consecrated in 1860 and, like most churches of the time (and even of today), it does not feature a ramp to access the sanctuary. At a Catholic Nuptial Mass, it is customary for the bride and groom to be seated within the sanctuary. We originally discussed building a permanent ramp as a gift to the church, but opted for a simpler and more cost-effective strategy. With the use of just one portable wheelchair ramp, an accessible route via the parish office, through the sacristy and into the sanctuary was possible. This meant that, at the end of the Mass, John had to temporarily exit the church and return via a side door for our recessional, but it worked! Sometimes accessibility requires thinking outside of the box.
- Tailoring: You might not think this would be an accessibility issue, but it turned out to be! John went to a tailor with a seemingly simple request – hem and taper his tuxedo pants (he is an amputee, after all). The changing room wasn't accessible, but that was the least of our problems. After taking measurements on two separate occasions, the tailor returned the pants with two different leg lengths, shoddy stitching and a seam that went straight down the front of the left leg. It could have been a disaster, but luckily the wife of John's best man is a Hollywood costume designer — she graciously stepped up and saved the day at the 11th hour (Thank you, Marissa!).
There were several accessibility barriers that we could only partially address, or could not actually solve at all:
- Accessible group transportation: Limos and party buses are not our style, but they are how the bride, groom and wedding party traditionally get from place to place. The best we could find was a 50-seat motor coach (complete overkill), and the non-emergency medical transportation providers we contacted were unwilling to accommodate a nighttime Saturday service. We instead loaded up the entire wedding party onto a packed metro train and, after our reception, we took the metro alone to our hotel — we're regular riders of public transportation, so we weren't embarrassed, but it is ridiculous how much of an accessible transportation desert St. Louis has become.
- Wheelchair repair: John's wheelchairs are in a constant state of disrepair due to airline damage and our wedding day was no exception — the high-pitched squeaks of his damaged Permobil F3 could be heard throughout the church, but we preferred that to the bright blue loaner wheelchair that did not match our color scheme.
- Wheelchair taxis: The most frustrating thing about the City of St. Louis is that there are zero wheelchair taxis or rideshares operating here. Several of our wheelchair-using friends were unable to attend our wedding due to a lack of accessible transportation, which broke our hearts and awakened a fire in us — St. Louis must have wheelchair taxis, and we will not rest until it is so. John has already put the question to elected officials.
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Looking ahead
We are only a month into our lives as husband and wife, and there is so much to look forward to! With the responsibilities of wedding planning and moving into our new home now behind us, we are eager to pour more of ourselves into this newsletter and into the accessible travel community.
In the near term, we are excited to share more on St. Louis — John is writing a (tough) love letter to the city we call home; and we also plan to share stories from our honeymoon trip to Buenos Aires, Argentina. If you follow us on social media, you'll know that days of canceled flights meant we spent more time stuck at the airport than enjoying our honeymoon, but we're glass half full types of people and made the most of our shortened trip!
There is still so much more to come — including new group tours, stories, reviews and a return of our Accessible Travel Chats, so stay tuned! Thank you, as always, for your readership and support! We will talk to you soon!
All the best,
— John and Stevie
Special thanks to our photographers from Ivory Grove and to our wedding planner, Celebrate by Cece. We are especially grateful to our families and friends who honored us with their presence.
