Bok Tower Gardens Celebrates All Its Lovebirds

On Saturday, February 15th, Bok Tower Gardens welcomed all  its former lovebirds at their wedding reunion celebration. Brides and grooms, as well as those who "popped the question" at the Gardens were invited to participate in the ceremonial Crossing of the Moat. Guests enjoyed a special Valentine's carillon concert by Geert D'hollander and were able to recreate photos at their special spot.

I love the idea of this event and thought other Altru users would as well. With some many beautiful spaces, I know many of our organizations are the home to engagement and wedding memories alike. So I spoke with Christine Foley, Development Assistant at Bok Tower Gardens, to get the scoop on the event:



We got the idea for a wedding reunion event from one of our community partners, who also happened to get married at Bok Tower Gardens.

We decided on the “Love in Bloom” event for couples who got married at Bok Tower Gardens as a way to reengage them with us. Some of the couples were still members of the Gardens, and we had a few rejoin as a result of this event. These alumni had not been segmented and marketed to separately before this event. We know the Gardens holds a special place for them since they chose to get married (or engaged) here, so we wanted to come up with a way to celebrate them.

The event was two-part: First, we had the Wedding Reunion Reception for those couples who were married at the Gardens. The second phase invited those engaged at the Gardens to join us for Crossing the Moat.  The event was included with general admission, so those who weren't members did have to pay general Gardens admission.

The Wedding Reunion Reception featured wedding photos and albums that the couples supplied. Each person received a commemorative Bok Tower Gardens Love in Bloom champagne flute. We had to move the event indoors at the last minute due to weather, but it cleared up nicely and couples were invited to go outside to listen to the Carillon Concert at the end of the reception.

Crossing the Moat is something special to our Gardens. Since the Tower and Moat are not accessible to the public, this is a special event for us. We typically only have the Moat open once a year for people to cross – on our Dedication weekend in February. We lined up the couples by the decade they were married, starting with the longest married. We took a group photo in front of the Brass Door of the Tower, and invited couples to recreate their wedding photo on their own before they left.

The development staff (4) worked the event, with the help of 10 volunteers. We were able to work with a local organization that sponsored the food (heavy hors d’oeuvres) for the event. We were happy with the turnout for the event – we had about 25 couples for the reception with an additional 10 engaged couples joining us later on.

We promoted the event on our Facebook page, Newsletters and emails. We decided this would be the most effective approach to reach this constituency.

One of the challenges we faced was to find this universe of people. Often when couples are planning their wedding, their contact information will change once they are married, so the records we have were mostly outdated. Also, we don’t know the current status of their marriage. People may be divorced or widowed. It is very important to be sensitive to this when trying to promote an event such as this. We don’t have records of people getting engaged here, so an all-call was the only way to seek out these couples. Given more time, we would have liked to reach all of these constituents individually, but again you get into a grey area where couples aren't together anymore, and that can be tricky for someone to inquire about.

We are in discussion on how to continue this type of event in the future.