‘Dream come true.’ Die-hard KC Chiefs fans find the perfect wedding venue: Arrowhead

When Kelli and Anthony Gascich began planning their 2019 wedding, they knew they wanted a venue with fun Kansas City flair. So Anthony, kind of jokingly, suggested a couple places close to their hearts.

One was Boulevard Brewing Co. … brews and I dos.

The other seemed more like a dream: Could these die-hard Kansas City Chiefs fans get married at Arrowhead Stadium?

Everything that happens in the Gascich family in the fall revolves around the Chiefs’ schedule. So the idea of renting event space at Arrowhead for a big family wedding and reception made perfect sense. It even came with the chance for the just-married Northland bride and groom to pose for pictures in the locker room where those guys named Mahomes and Kelce suit up.

“We got to go into the locker room and we have pictures of all of that. I think my husband smiled bigger in the locker room than when we got married,” said Kelli, an oncology nurse at Children’s Mercy.

Getting married in an NFL stadium might not be everyone’s idea of a dream wedding, but for football fanatics, “it’s cool,” said Anthony, who works for Oracle Cerner.

One of his cousins still refers to it as “the royal wedding.”

Many NFL stadiums allow the public to rent event spaces or even use the field for weddings and receptions. In Las Vegas, at Allegiant Stadium, champagne toasts come with the wedding package. Nissan Stadium in Nashville offers fireworks.

At Lambeau Field, the historic home of the Green Bay Packers, couples can rent space for bachelor parties, bridal showers, rehearsal dinners and wedding receptions.

At GEHA Field at Arrowhead, couples can have wedding receptions in any number of event spaces listed for the public at chiefs.com. The North Club, for instance, is big enough for 1,200 people, with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Founder’s Plaza and Kauffman Stadium. Tower Club East and Tower Club West offer views of the playing field.

There’s no general wedding package pricing offered on the Chiefs’ website.

“We work to build custom packages with our clients, so we don’t advertise a flat or average cost,” Kimberly Kruse, event sales manager for GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium, told The Star. “Our goal is to deliver wedding experiences that meet the needs of the couple while working within their budgets.”

Earlier this year, casino review website Bonusfinder revealed the 10 most expensive NFL stadiums for weddings.

Lumen Field, home of the Seattle Seahawks, was the priciest at $40,000. Second: Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia, where it costs $30,000 just to rent the field for the ceremony, the survey found.

And Arrowhead ranked third, ringing up at $26,000 “for the field rental alone if you chose a weekend day,” the survey said. (Shame on Bonusfinder for placing the stadium in Kansas.)

“There are premium experiences that do cost more money than others, and while the exact cost varies by the type of event and other factors, access to the playing surface at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium during an event is one of those experiences,” Kruse said.

The average cost of a wedding in the United States was $28,000 last year, according to an annual survey by The Knot, a wedding planning site. That includes ceremony and reception. Kelli said they spent somewhere in that ballpark for their Arrowhead wedding in June 2018.

It’s cheaper to get hitched or engaged in the parking lot during a tailgate, which Chiefs fans have done. One couple in 2013 wore red-and-white Zubaz pants for their Arrowhead parking lot vows. (Who remembers Zubaz?)

If you’re lucky, someone else will pay the tab. Last December, Chiefs fans Jordyn Burnidge and Chad Clauser of Kansas City, North, exchanged vows on the GEHA Deck at Arrowhead after they won a contest sponsored by Helzberg Diamonds. Their reception was a tailgate party.

Angelique (Angel) Jones Reeves and her husband, Michael Reeves, who live in Rolla, got married at Arrowhead last year — on the sly.

They threw a Hail Mary pass by buying tickets for one of the public guided tours of the stadium for themselves, minister Karmen Dungans — also a Chiefs fan — and two witnesses. Then during the tour they sneakily said their vows, using the stadium as the backdrop.

“I don’t think anyone has pulled off what we have done,” said Michael, a metal fabricator who could not be prouder that their marriage license says they got married at Arrowhead on April 23, 2021.

Quick, kiss the bride

If you see how Angel and Michael have decorated their central Missouri home, it’s not a surprise they wanted to get hitched at Arrowhead. When people walk into their house, “it’s like walking into a Chiefs fan page,” said Angel, who works for a window manufacturer.

Yes, that’s a red Chiefs flag hanging like a canopy from the ceiling over their bed. They found each other through football.

They met in a Chiefs fan group on Facebook. Michael lived in North Carolina, a longtime Chiefs fan holding his own in Panthers country. She didn’t know he lived 1,000 miles away until he asked her out on a date.

A long-distance romance bloomed in the 2016 offseason. About six months later, they met in person for the first time at his front door. He bear-hugged her and kissed her in one of those Hollywood moments.

“Basically, if it wasn’t for the Chiefs and Facebook we would have never met,” said Angel, who proposed to Michael just months after that kiss.

Fast forward to Michael and his Southern accent moving to Rolla to live with Angel. They blended their families Brady Bunch-style — his four, her two. And going to Chiefs home openers became a family tradition.

When they talked about getting married, they considered eloping to save money. But Angel, who began cheerleading at age 10 and coached cheerleading for several years — she still teaches dance and volunteers as a cheer coach — had a different proposal.

“For me to get married at Arrowhead, that was the ultimate dream come true,” she said. “For most girls, there ain’t no way. But I think outside the box. I knew where I wanted to get married at. I guess I was kind of a football fan’s dream girl.”

First, they arranged to get married during a tailgate party, but those plans fell through, as did three more attempts. Discouraged, they gave up and just stayed engaged — for five years.

To celebrate their fifth anniversary together, they decided to take a 90-minute tour of Arrowhead, which got Angel thinking again about a wedding there. They couldn’t afford thousands of dollars to rent an event space — but maybe there was another way.

What if she showed up for the tour in her wedding dress and they got married on the spot?

Angel recalled a local minister who had married a couple at Kauffman Stadium a couple of years before who wanted to also marry a couple at Arrowhead. Fellow Chiefs fans helped her track down ordained minister Dungans of Overland Park.

Angel bought tour tickets for Dungans and two witnesses. And off they went.

“It was during the workday one day,” said Dungans. “There were other visitors, people going on the tour, and she is in a wedding dress, with red glittery shoes. There was no doubting that she was a bride.”

The others on the tour congratulated them, thinking Angel and Michael had just gotten married. But they soon knew what really was up when Angel grabbed Michael’s hand and walked onto the field. Dungans followed and married them fast, with football-themed vows.

“We didn’t even know if they were going to let us,” said Angel. “I said, ‘Lord, if it’s meant to be, just let it happen.’”

It took literally minutes to get to the “you may kiss the bride” part.

“Then the other people on the tour were, ‘Oh my gosh’ and they’re just clapping away,” said Dungans. “And because it was so beautiful they (tour guides) let them walk out into the middle of the field and do a picture. And then we finished the tour taking tons of pictures.”

So their wedding album includes pictures of Angel with her bouquet and Michael in a Chiefs jersey standing at the podium where coach Andy Reid talks to the press, one of the stops on the tour that also includes a visit to the locker room and Chiefs Hall of Honor.

“I still look back and think wow, how amazing. It’s literally a once in a lifetime opportunity,” said Angel. “I was nervous. Honestly, we weren’t even supposed to do that. I’m sure if we had asked ahead of time they would have said no.

“They put a stop to it after us, because when we posted that we got married at Arrowhead, people were messaging us nonstop. But we were kind of a one-miracle shot.”

Kruse said that while weddings are a small part of the stadium’s events business, “we do know that they offer an experience that many fans are interested in.”

And, while “we appreciate the creativity” of Angel and Michael, Kruse said, anyone interested in having a wedding at Arrowhead should contact the events team.

Security was tight

Arrowhead was already a special place for the Gascich family, a second home for these season ticket-holders of more than 30 years. It is a rare home-game Sunday when you don’t find them tailgating for hours before kickoff, then watching the action from Section 310, Row 1. The rule: In the seats early enough to see the team warm up, before the fireworks, in sizzling heat and Arctic cold.

Still, people are kind of shocked when Kelli tells them she got married at Arrowhead. “Some people think it was in the parking lot,” she said.

She doesn’t remember exactly how much their wedding cost, but thinks it was somewhere near the national average north of $20,000. That included everything — Arrowhead, the dress, the tux, the party shuttles to and from the stadium.

“The venue itself is very reasonable,” she said. “I believe the venue was about $4,000. And then you have to use their caterer, which is a little more expensive. But they give you the linens, silverware, everything is included in the service. So once you add up all those small things, it really wasn’t bad.

“The people that we worked with were fabulous. My mom and I could not say enough good things about them.”

There was no mistaking they were celebrating in the home of the Chiefs, Anthony said. The security was NFL-tight. Guests couldn’t just wander around the place. He joked that he couldn’t tell if his dad was more happy about being at the stadium or his son getting married.

Some brides who get married at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium play up the Chiefs red in their color schemes, putting their bridesmaids in red, decorating with red flowers. One Arrowhead bride wore lipstick-red patent leather stilettos with her white gown and carried a bouquet of red roses and anemones.

For couples who want to go all in on the Chiefs theme, “you can hire KC Wolf if you really want to,” said Kelli.

She avoided traditional Chiefs colors, staying more on the burgundy side of red. “I wanted it to still be our day,” she said.

But they went all in with their wedding pictures.

Kissing in the locker room. Anthony dipping her on the field, the red seats behind them glowing in the sunlight.

Three weeks after the Chiefs won the Super Bowl in 2020, the couple had a baby boy. Little Anthony is already a Chiefs fan who watches games on TV with his dad and more than anything else likes to wear Chiefs gear, some of it given to the family by fans who sit near them in the stadium, people who after all these years are family to them.

Some day soon, Kelli wants to do a photo shoot of baby Anthony in the place where Mom and Dad’s journey began.

“I would like to go and get some pictures with him where we got married,” she said. “I feel like that’s just kind of part of our story.”

This story was originally published October 30, 2022 at 5:00 AM.

Lisa Gutierrez

The Kansas City Star

816-562-6832

Lisa Gutierrez has been a reporter for The Kansas City Star since 2000. She learned journalism at the University of Kansas, her alma mater. She writes about pop culture, local celebrities, trends and life in the metro through its people. Oh, and dogs. You can reach her at lgutierrez@kcstar.com or follow her on Twitter - @LisaGinKC.