What does wedding planning look like for engaged Iowa State students? What about students who want to get married on campus?

Cole Knutson, event management office supervisor, said that Iowa State holds 15 to 20 weddings each year. Of those, 10 to 15 of those people are students or alumni. 

“Widely, the weddings are happening between April and August,” Knutson said. “So it’s happening in that like three to six month period.”

Knutson said the office helps couples navigate university policy and determine what decorations are acceptable when planning.

“So we help them get connected with… Iowa State Catering for their food,” Knutson said. “We help them navigate risk management, or help them navigate the insurance needs for their event.”

Knutson said that each of the lawn spaces are $520 to rent for the full day. The price varies for the indoor venues on campus depending on the space.

“At the Memorial Union, we’re blessed to have one of the largest continuous ballroom spaces in central Iowa,” Knutson said. “What that means is that all of our ballrooms are connected, so a wedding can have as many or as few as they’d like. And as they grow and expand, they could say, ‘Hey, my head count went Ballroom… so it’s able to really be customized based on what kind of budget people are thinking.”

Addie Dearment, a senior in elementary education, said since her engagement, her workload has increased. 

“Just with wedding planning and kind of figuring out what’s next after we’re done with school,” Dearment said. “But honestly, things really haven’t changed. I still live in my same apartment with my same roommates.”

Similarly, Ella Speich, a senior in elementary education, said it’s been stressful planning on top of school.

“There’s been a lot more responsibilities, especially with student teaching,” Speich said.
“But I made sure I prioritized planning during the summer instead of putting it all on myself during the school year.”

Speich mentioned that it would be cool to have event management majors at Iowa State help.

“It would be kind of cool if the students in the wedding planning major and event management with focus on weddings could actually plan people’s weddings, and you could have somebody help plan your wedding for free,” Speich said. “That would be an interesting concept, for sure.”

Knutson mentioned that Iowa State provides as little or as much help as people want with their wedding planning.

“Event management helps people have that experience of in the room, there’s going to be somebody that has run 50 to 100 weddings, so they know what problems you’re going to experience, and kind of head things off the path so that you don’t even know that there’s a problem on the day of your wedding,” Knutson said. “So we serve widely as a venue coordinator, more than an event coordinator, because we represent the venue itself.”

Knutson said when hosting a wedding on campus, they “don’t nickel and dime you.”

“When people pay for the space for a wedding, they kind of get an all-in price,” Knutson said. “And [with] the Memorial Union… people who have weddings inside have to get their catering through Iowa State. That means when they come and meet with me to help them plan their wedding, they’re also meeting with their caterer who’s just down the hall and is in the building. And it’s very rare for a wedding venue to have all of that in one place.”

Dearment said her wedding is planned for May of 2025 and that planning can be a lot.

“There’s so many things that go into planning a wedding that you don’t really think about until you’re actually, like, doing it,” Dearment said. “I would consider myself a pretty organized type of person, so I’ve kind of thought it’s a lot of fun planning a wedding, but it definitely can be a lot with school combined. And then I’m an elementary education major, so I’ll soon teach next semester, so I’m sure it will get a lot more stressful for me then as well.”

Dearment said her wedding is in her hometown–away from Ames–and that it would be easier to plan if it were in Ames.

“I think it would be a little bit easier if we were, like, if we were getting married at a venue in Ames, because then… it’s easier to meet with vendors,” Dearment said. “It’s easier to make appointments to go tour the venue with vendors and with our parents and everything. If we do want to go look at the venue or have any questions about that, we usually have to make it like a weekend trip home because it is about two hours away.” 

Contrarily, Speich said her wedding is set for June 2025 in Pella, but planning out of town hasn’t added stress because she hasn’t had to go up there often.

Financially, Dearment said she feels lucky that her and her fiancé have supportive families. 

“I don’t think we would be able to financially do it if we didn’t have such supportive families,” Dearment said. “With the wedding process, we pay for all of our bills here at school on our own, but we’re very lucky in the sense that our parents are paying for most of the wedding.”

Similarly, Speich said financial expenses have not been stressful for her.

“I can definitely see how it’s a lot more stressful for people,” Speich said. “I am not paying for my wedding, however, so I haven’t felt a lot of the stress of having to manage that.”

Speich said there are a lot of people in her classes who are engaged. 

“Being an elementary education major, there’s definitely the ‘ring before spring’ stigma, and it definitely is true, there’s a lot of girls who are engaged or close to that point,” Speich said.

However, Speich said she wasn’t planning on getting engaged in college.

“It kind of just happened,” Speich said. “I wouldn’t say I was ever against it, but yeah… I just found my person, I guess.”

Speich said being engaged has changed her priorities, but beyond that, not a ton has changed.

“I would say the main thing is, you definitely, when you are getting engaged, you are committing yourself to that other person like for real, for real,” Speich said. “And so the emphasis on where my priorities lie is maybe a little bit different than somebody who’s not engaged in college. [I’m] just more focused on spending time with [my fiancé], especially because he doesn’t live in Ames.”

Knutson said that people who get married on campus love the connection to Iowa State and said he got married at the Alumni Center.

“I could say that I got married like 100 yards from where I met my wife,” Knutson said. “So, those kind of, like, storybook kind of tale ends to your relationship are invaluable.”

For more information on hosting a wedding on campus, visit the Memorial Union’s wedding planning website.