When she moved to New York after college, Ferguson never could have seen Stralkowski or MSU again. But on a snow-covered Saturday a few weeks ago, Ferguson was back.

From the limo she saw the stained-glass alumni chapel covered in snow, and she felt it.

“That’s when I think I started to get nervous, or excited,” Ferguson said. “I’m going to get married here to a man I love.”

Ferguson and Stralkowski are one couple of hundreds who see MSU as more than a school, but as the place they began their married lives. Each year, MSU’s campus and buildings play host to more than 200 couples starting a new life together.

“It was very heartfelt,” Ferguson said.

“Just the history of being a part of so many couples who have wed in the chapel. For me, it went by quickly, but it was one of the most exhilarating experience I’ve ever had in my life.”

Going to the chapel
Six slots every weekend, two to three weddings per week. A hundred weddings per year. And Steve Aikin is there for them all.

“(The Alumni Memorial) Chapel connotes simplicity,” Aikin said.
“Sometimes something that is really elaborate becomes kind of sterile — there’s an intimacy with (the chapel).”

Aikin is the sexton for the Alumni Memorial Chapel, the ringmaster in the background of wedding ceremonies, coordinating everything from how the bridesmaids are lined up to the exact moment the bride makes her entrance.

“I remember him telling one of the ushers … let (my song) play for 10 seconds and then open the doors,” Ferguson said. “Man, I loved that.”

Aikin is one of many people working to book and organize more than 200 MSU weddings each year. Although he also is a pastor at Aurelius Baptist Church in Mason, Mich., Aikin said an MSU wedding isn’t like others.

“Whether it be the basketball team or living in one of the (residence) halls; MSU for the student becomes home and you’re getting married at home.”

About 100 weddings a year are done at the chapel, with couples booking more than a year in advance for a weekend during the summer, said Kristina Baxendale, conference services manager and wedding specialist for Spartan Hospitality Group. Kellogg Center, the Union and Spartan Stadium’s Spartan Club also host 100 weddings a year among them. And the number of weddings is increasing.

“We’re definitely booking a lot heavier from 2010 to 2011,” Baxendale said.

But while MSU plays a prominent role in the lives of many, it offers something more as a wedding location, said Pam Ehlert, conference services manager and wedding specialist for Spartan Hospitality Group.

“Because we’re part of the MSU family, our staff tends to stay on longer,” Ehlert said. “I don’t see the high turnover rate in terms of managers so, in the sense, our product stays consistent.”

Gonna get ma-a-a-a-RRIED
It was a romance born in the physics building, developed on Abbot Street and Breslin Center and fostered on the banks of the Red Cedar River.

So when it came time for Kristy Malak and Matthew Sekedat to get married, they were more than willing to travel more than 600 miles from New York to their alma mater.

Malak, now Kristy Sekedat, remembers many things from the day — the chapel surrounded by the fall leaves, the string quartet made of MSU students playing her down the aisle.

But the thing she remembers most was the feeling.

“I remember the music and just the huge gush of emotions,” Kristy Sekedat said. “It was amazing. I couldn’t stop crying.”

The Sekedats, who were married in 2004, traveled from New York to East Lansing to get married at MSU. But Aikin said alumni are willing to travel many miles, even cross the ocean from Hawaii or Korea, to be married at MSU.

And MSU makes sure the experience will be worth it.

In 2008, Kurt Kwiatkowski, then the manager of The Gallery, got a call.

A couple getting married at the Alumni Memorial Chapel in a few weeks just had lost their reception area. How would he feel about holding a wedding reception in the cafeteria?

“I was like, ‘We can knock this out of the park and we can have a lot of fun doing it,’” Kwiatkowski said.

Now the corporate chef for Culinary Services in the Division of Residential and Hospitality Services, Kwiatkowski remembers the final product — white table clothes, centerpieces, menus, a waffle bar and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with no crusts for the kids.

“We were just really trying to go that extra mile,” Kwiatkowski said.

But whether the big day is in a dining hall or a half-century old chapel, getting married at MSU is another way Spartans are making the school a part of their lives.

“It’s just special because MSU is what brought us together,” Kristy Sekedat said.

“If I never went to MSU I never would have met my husband. … It will always have a special place in my heart.”