A Shakespearean Love Story in Yellow (with Live Tattoos!)

Madilynn wanted her guests to step into a production of her love life, and she means production. A stage for the vows. Candles for stage lights. A velvet aisle runner with Juliet’s balcony-scene vow printed down its length. And a palette built on their two favorite colors: yellow for her, green for Brooks.

She is a theatre maker and actress who has studied Shakespeare since she was 21. He is a chef and oyster ambassador. They were dance partners in a high school production of Spamalot years before their first real date. “We used that theme as an umbrella,” Madilynn says of Romeo and Juliet, “and added the other elements after.”

The other elements, at The Orlo in Tampa: bridesmaids in every yellow carrying callas strung with silver chain, some groomsmen with feather fans dressed in orchids, a cherub motif that turns up on the cake, the tables, and the flower boy, and a tattoo artist tattooing guests from cocktail hour straight through the reception. Delaney of Wilder Mind Events planned and designed it, Arms of Persephone built the florals, and Caty Canon photographed it.

St. Pete was the original plan. They live in Kansas City, and Madilynn grew up vacationing in St. Petersburg at her grandparents’ place, but nothing in St. Pete was on theme. The Orlo won on the airport, with a guest list flying in from Kansas City, and on something she felt the minute she walked in. It reminded her of her campus at Stephens College and her great-grandmother’s house in Hamilton, MO. “It was a little piece of Missouri in Florida for us.”

The Look

Can we talk about this eye? Just Beauty and Lindsay Travis Artistry took a yellow-green wing way past where bridal liner usually stops, pulling the yellow from her bouquet and the green from Brooks’ shirt all the way up to her face. If you’ve been wanting color on your eye but worry it’ll fight with your dress, pull the shade straight from your wedding colors. It’ll look like it was always part of the plan.

Madilynn wanted “a big Cinderella dress with voluptuous hips and something I’ve never seen before,” and she was ready to fly to Chicago or New York to find it. Mimi’s Couture in Kansas City saved her the airfare. “Mimi’s Couture was my little NYC moment in the middle of the Midwest.” She went in set on lace, the ultimate romantic fabric, tried a few, and did not love them on. The runner-up was a Nicole + Felicia Couture gown with lace, crystals, and big dramatic energy, and it weighed her down. “The dress wore me; I did not wear it.”

Kaylee, her dress helper, suggested flipping the approach: let the gown be the base and build the drama on top. The third dress she tried was the SenStudio SE049-1, Elizabethan hips, tulle underneath for structure, ivory instead of bridal white. Over it, she layered a custom puff-sleeve, high-neck bolero for the ceremony, which is where the bishop sleeves and turtleneck come from, and for the reception swapped it for a vintage-style pearl shoulder necklace and a pair of Swarovski glasses. It’s a smart way to get two looks from one gown: keep the dress clean and let the layer that comes off at dinner carry the drama.

Her favorite part of the whole look was the nails: XXL square press-ons in yellow lace, “DRAMATIC as hell.”

The first look had an audience. The wedding party and both families found the windows, and Caty Canon caught the second the two of them realized they were being watched.

Brooks wore a white double-breasted jacket over a green patterned shirt and round amber frames, with two pins Madilynn gave him for the day: a vintage leopard in emerald green and a yellow sunburst, one for each of their personalities. Every groomsman got a pin matched to his own personality, too. If the pins have you rethinking the boutonniere, here’s why brooches are the new boutonniere.

A Wedding Party in Every Yellow

“I refused to settle for simplicity and the ideology of traditionalism,” Madilynn says, and the wedding party is where you see it first. No two bridesmaids wore the same dress or the same yellow: buttercup ruffles, a floral-appliqué halter, iridescent sequins, a strapless ruffled top with palazzo trousers. “The varied wedding party looks add an editorial, fashion-forward feel,” says planner Delaney of Wilder Mind Events. What keeps that range reading as a group and not a crowd is one fixed anchor, the men all in a single deep forest green, so the yellows can wander from butter to marigold without anything going adrift.

Madilynn’s bouquet from Arms of Persephone mixed spotted cymbidium orchids, yellow calla lilies, and white roses, with silver ball chain trailing from the stems and orchid heads tied to the ends. “The florals are intentionally wild and garden-inspired,” Delaney says, “with abundant yellow blooms, delicate whites, and loose greenery and tulle creating movement throughout the ceremony and reception.” The silver chain gives the bouquet movement even in a still frame, and it catches light in a way ribbon can’t.

Not every flower in the wedding party came as a bouquet. The one man standing with Madilynn’s bridesmaids carried a purse that’s only a frame: antique gold, kiss-lock clasp, chain strap, and where the bag should be, a curtain of chains threaded with carnations. Carnations hold up for hours out of water, a smart pick for something carried all night.

The bridesmaids carried all-yellow callas trailing the same silver chain as Madilynn’s bouquet, so they read as a set without copying hers. And because “I wanted the groomsmen to walk with flowers,” as Madilynn puts it, the men did: some carried bouquets of their own, and the rest carried yellow feather fans edged in lace, dressed with phalaenopsis orchids, craspedia, and a tassel.

They technically met in high school theatre. The love story, and Madilynn is specific about this, began on August 7, 2020, with a light picnic and a walk at the Overland Park Arboretum that did not end until 2am. “Needless to say, we didn’t want to stop talking to each other, and haven’t ever since.”

The proposal went back to the Arboretum on a spring day: her favorite snacks, a picnic, a walk, one knee. The ring is a flower-shaped design with a yellow diamond at its center. “I bawled like a baby when I saw the ring.”

The Ceremony

Wilder Mind Events built the ceremony room as a set, and Madilynn can list the pieces: “The big draped curtain, the candles for stage lights, the ambience of wood mixed with velvet, the wooden stage my husband and I stood on for our vows- all bringing the concept to life.” Arms of Persephone framed the stage with two floral columns in yellow, peach, and white, with a cloud of ivory tulle between them.

The runner names the theme out loud. Olive velvet printed in yellow blackletter with Juliet’s line, “My bounty is as boundless as the sea, My love as deep; the more I give to thee, The more I have, for both are infinite.”

Sicily Mathenia, one of Madilynn’s best friends, and her boyfriend PT played musical theatre and classic love songs while guests found their seats, then sang the processional live: “One Day” and “Next to Me,” both by Imagine Dragons, “both songs that I’ve wanted at my wedding since I’ve heard them.”

And now a moment for all those unique florals the groomsmen and bridesmaids carried!

Her mom and dad met her halfway down the aisle, another tradition she bent to fit.

Andrea Ambam, Madilynn’s best friend from high school and a playwright now working in New York City, officiated. “She was the one and only person I had in mind for this role,” Madilynn says. “She was the calming presence I needed for such a nerve-wracking time.” The ceremony included a Celtic tying of the knot, for Madilynn’s ancestors.

Then the rings went around the room. Every guest held them, one by one, while Sicily sang Adele’s “Make You Feel My Love.” “I watched while holding my heart the entire time because it felt like everyone got to be involved in our love story,” Madilynn says. “That gave my guests a connection in our marriage forever.”

Cocktail Hour and the Reception

Cocktail hour spread across three rooms, and in each one Madilynn hung framed wedding photos of every married couple in the family. “We come from a long line of married couples, and we wanted to celebrate their love simultaneously.” Kulgra carried the Shakespeare thread into the paper: escort cards printed as tickets, each with a botanical illustration pointing the guest to the flower that marks their table and the meal they chose; table signs named for the flowers in his plays; and a welcome sign of Tofu and Peanut, the couple’s dogs, in Elizabethan wardrobe, drinking cocktails.

The tables most clearly capture the mismatch Madilynn was after. “I wanted mismatched fabrics and textures because I wanted to stay far away from traditionalism.” Mint tiered tulle under yellow satin, honey-toned chargers, loose yellow wildflower runners down the length of each table, and pieces from Kate Ryan Event Rentals and Nuage Design Inc. Nobody rents tiered tulle table skirts, it turned out, so her grandmother bought them. What holds the mix together is the amber pressed glass at every setting, the one repeated note down a table where almost nothing else repeats.

A Fresh Connection Catering served a plated, fully vegan dinner, a pasta and a mushroom bourguignon, because vegan was the other thing Madilynn never compromised on.

The sweetheart table sits under the same ivory tulle, with a disco ball tucked into the flowers at its base. Madilynn wanted the wedding itself to stay small, so before Tampa she threw a party back home in Missouri, “a garden party disco dream,” to celebrate with the people she loves. That left Tampa free to be her “intimate romantic fantasy.”

Gabby Bakes made the cake: three tiers of pale yellow buttercream swags with green dots, white cherubs holding up the middle, and two entwined figures on top. Like the rest of the menu, the cake is fully vegan, and it was so good that Madilynn and her family finished the top tier the next day. Madilynn shares, “Gabby Bakes in Tampa, Florida is the best wedding cake designer in that area HANDS DOWN.”

For the party, she swapped the puff sleeves for the pearl shoulder necklace and put on the Swarovski glasses, and Brooks changed into an olive-patterned shirt.

The Dance Floor

Their first dance was “Don’t Worry Baby” by the Beach Boys, a song Madilynn also had printed on a personalized record that guests signed as their guest book. A little gold-framed sign beside it invited everyone to “leave your mark on the song that marked the beginning of our next chapter.”

If a record has you rethinking the sign-in book, here are more of our favorite wedding guest book ideas.

Madilynn choreographed the father-daughter dance herself, and it turned into a flash mob with her immediate family. She and her dad opened on Tom Petty’s “Wildflowers,” “very soft and slow and sweet,” then “popped off to It’s Tricky.” Her mom came in halfway through “with some sass.” “We Are Family” brought both brothers and both sisters-in-law in for solos, and Brooks arrived for the last chorus and one big kick line. The lights went out, and Noah Grey Music took over with a DJ, two live singers, and a saxophonist, all of whom ended up on the floor with the guests. Madilynn’s one request was a live “Oh, What a World” by Kacey Musgraves, the song she sang to Brooks in the car before he proposed.

Tattoos at the Reception

Zack of Snake Byrd Ink set up under an arc lamp with a flash sheet he and Olivia drew for the wedding, and Delaney has the right read on why it worked. “Rather than simply following traditional wedding expectations, the couple turned familiar elements into interactive and highly personal experiences,” she says. The flash sheet gave guests “the opportunity to leave with a permanent, personal keepsake from the wedding.”

If she could change two things: the reception would run longer, “because I could’ve partied all night and everyone could’ve gotten more tattoos,” and the menu would get sillier. “I wish I had vegan burgers and fries to juxtapose everything around us. Just to get silly with it!”

Her favorite moments of the day, in her own words:

Advice from Madilynn

Madilynn used to tell her family and friends that marriage was not the lifestyle for her. Five years with Brooks changed that. “I don’t think I would’ve ever gotten married if it weren’t for Brooks.” Where she landed: “The commitment is the heart of it all… the party’s just the cherry on top!”

Congratulations, Madilynn and Brooks! All the best from GWS.