Natalie and Jeff’s Music Loving Chicago Wedding With a Blue Wedding Dress By The Adamkovi

Natalie and Jeff’s Chicago wedding completely reimagined tradition. They were married on 19th September 2025 at Revel Motor Row with 150 guests. Rather than keeping “something blue” as a subtle detail, Natalie made it the main event, wearing a striking blue floral gown. The dress felt personal and wildly memorable, especially against the industrial architecture of their venue. The couple, both professional audio engineers, met in 2014 while working at Capitol Studios in Los Angeles, but they chose to get married in Natalie’s hometown of Chicago. Music was woven into every layer of the weekend, especially the welcome party at Schubas Tavern, where Natalie’s father performed with his band. The wedding day moved through beautifully distinct chapters: a golden courtyard cocktail hour, an intimate ceremony, a warm sit-down dinner, a packed dance reception, and an after-party that carried the celebration to midnight. With Natalie’s unforgettable blue gown at the center, the wedding felt creative and stylish, a perfect reflection of Natalie and Jeff.

The proposal
Jeff proposed during a trip to London! We spent a Sunday afternoon strolling through Hyde Park and were sitting on a park bench watching paddle-boaters when he pulled the ring out of his pocket.

Where did you splurge and where did you save?
There were definitely a lot of splurge areas because we were equally passionate about having top notch food, music, and photography. But we saved by not having a wedding planner and handling all of the design elements ourselves. Stationary, signage, and website were all designed and DIY-ed by us. Our good friend and graphic designer, Nikki at Stover Creative, helped us with our invitations!

How did you choose your photographer?
We found The Adamkovi online and loved their previous work. We really gravitated towards their vibrant and dramatic style, and were looking for something unique and candid. One call with Pavel and we connected right away!

Theme or colour scheme
Our mood boards were filled with cocktail and jazz lounges, speakeasies. Lots of color, kind of moody and dramatic. Oranges, reds, deep purples and navy.

Flowers
I loved our flowers! The flowers so bold and gorgeous – we kind of left it up to the florist at Revel and she knocked it out of the park. The giant orange roses were amazing.

Food
Our appetizers and menu for the seated dinner were entirely vegetarian, in honor of Natalie’s lifelong vegetarianism. Passed apps included curried tofu, korean fried cauliflower, spring rolls, and watermelon gazpacho. Dinner menu consisted of a tomato verrine, a beautiful salad with honeycomb, and a wild mushroom wellington for the main course.
And later in the evening we revealed a Kansas City BBQ spread in the courtyard, to honor Jeff’s hometown roots, which was a huge hit! Z-Man brisket sandwiches and burnt ends with all the classic KC BBQ sauces.

Wedding cake?
Our cake was so much fun and got a lot of attention. It was a replica of the iconic Capitol Records building in LA which is where we met and worked for many years. They even included the “Hollywood Jazz” mural on southern wall. SO awesome.

Entertainment
The Chicago Players supplied music for our entire evening. We had a jazz trio during our cocktail hour, live music throughout dinner, the full 12-piece band for dancing, and a DJ for the after party. We were music-maxxing!! During the planning phase, it’s so hard to know exactly how good your band is going be, or even what exactly they’re going play, but we were blown away by The Chicago Players musicians. They made the most tasteful and unique choices of tunes to play during dinner, and the playlist for the dancing portion was perfection. I found myself just wanting to watch and take in their entire set, but of course I was being pulled in a million directions.

Personal touches
As I mentioned, we designed the invitations (a collage created with meaningful mementos from our relationship), all the menus and signage. For our welcome party, which was held at a bar/music venue that Natalie grew up going to, we designed concert posters that included the full lineup for the evening. We also had a “merch table” set up… we weren’t selling anything, but we had designed pins and a few T-shirts that commemorated different phases of the relationship (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood for our meeting, the Missing You Tour for our years spent long distance, the World Tour for all the places we’ve visited together, and the Reunion Tour, for when we moved back to the same place). Natalie’s Dad’s band (The New Heartaches) played a full set, and then several of Natalie and Jeff’s friends performed prepared songs. Nat and Jeff got up on a stage a few times as well to play music with friends from all phases of their lives. An incredibly special evening!!

Special moments
Our ceremony felt particularly special to us – it was what we were calling a “pop-up ceremony” in the middle of our cocktail hour. We were out in the courtyard of our venue, and after about 40 minutes of cocktail hour, our officiant (a close friend, Abbey!) told people to gather round. Our trio of musicians transitioned off of their little stage, and began playing our processional music. Jeff and Nat walked out together and joined Abbey at the platform. All of our guests gathered around us in a semi circle and we had our brief ceremony where we exchanged our personal vows. Afterwards, we were able to walk off the platform and directly into our crowd of guests for hugs and congratulations and the party immediately continued!
One fun thing that we did was put all our guests names in a pretty vase and then pull out a name during our ceremony to choose our “witness” to sign the marriage license. Just for a funny, interactive moment!

Advice for other couples
Natalie’s biggest regret was not saving desserts for later – she was so excited about all the dessert options and ended up being too distracted to have any!! If that was her biggest regret, I guess things went pretty well. I also really cherished the moments I made to connect with as many guests as possible. It is very hard to feel like you’ve given everyone the amount of attention they deserve for showing up for you, but even small moments were memorable and meaningful to me. Also, I was nervous about doing personal vows in front of everyone – definitely the most nerve-wracking moment of the entire experience, but I’m so glad we did.
Jeff was glad that we delayed our honeymoon until well after the wedding. Spending extra time with our guests who were visiting Chicago and being the last ones to leave ensured that we could be the ones to send everyone off. Rehashing the day with friends and family the following morning was one of the highlights!!

Biggest surprise
The biggest surprise is just the absolute whirlwind of it all. You can plan and plan and plan and you just don’t know what you’ll have the capacity to think about on the actual day. The outpouring of love and the moment when you look around the room and realize how miraculous it is to have all of your people and all of your partner’s people in one room, is incredible! We could never have imagined how much fun it all would be!!