Sheila Maturo had never been to the Texas Renaissance Festival when the man she’d been dating for four months texted her a photo of an ivy-covered chapel on the fairgrounds.

“This is a nice chapel,” Jason Bradley wrote along with the photo, sending the snap during a school field trip he was chaperoning. He didn’t think much of it, and turned his attention back to his students.

Yes, Maturo agreed, grinning when she received the text. The chapel was very pretty. But that was far from the only reason she couldn’t wipe a smile off of her face. She and Bradley were long-distance dating, after meeting online: She lived in a tiny home in Florida, he lived in Houston with his young son. They’d never discussed marriage. But Maturo already knew Bradley was the man she wanted to marry. And a text of a chapel? Surely that meant something.

She got her answer on July 4, when Bradley proposed.

Since both Maturo, 33, and Bradley, 40, have been married before, they originally planned to host a small ceremony at the justice of the peace — essentially an elopement, attended by only the couple and Bradley’s son, Jason.

“But her mom said if she wasn’t in attendance, she would kick my butt,” said Bradley, a teacher at Stevenson Middle School. “And I got the same response from my mom.”

So Bradley made a suggestion that bordered on a joke: What about that cute little chapel at the Ren Fest?

Maturo nodded. “That will work.”

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A Growing Trend

Maturo and Bradley were one of seven couples married at the Texas Renaissance Festival on Saturday, Oct. 12, the busiest day of the season for the festival’s ballooning wedding business. In total, the festival will host 68 weddings this year.

“When I first started eight years ago, we were only doing about 25 weddings each year,” said Vee Brauner, the festival’s event coordinator. “And they were mostly all in costume.”

But what began as a niche experience has become an ever-more-mainstream phenomenon — thanks to a world in which weddings are evolving into all-out experiences.

A few years ago, Brauner got the idea to market the festival as a potential wedding venue at Houston bridal shows. At first, she was greeted with a lot of strange looks. But that’s changing.

“We’ve shown people you don’t have to be in costume. That doesn’t have to be your thing,” she said. “The grounds are just a beautiful place to have your ceremony. And, total bonus: You get to experience the festival all day long.”

Wedding costs are soaring. The average cost of an American wedding was $35,334 in 2018, according to The Knot, a wedding media company widely considered to be a leader in the industry. And while Houston is often touted as an affordable city, that’s not necessarily the case for weddings. The Knot reported that it is the 25th most expensive market in the nation for weddings, with an average cost of $33,931. Hardly a bargain. But at Ren Fest, the Cadillac package rings in at $7,500.

And it certainly won’t look like your best friend’s wedding — unless she’s one of the other 67 brides coming through this year. With so many weddings in such a short stretch of time, Ren Fest has become a bit of a wedding factory, with all-inclusive options that include the meals and flower arrangements.

‘Is this real?’

With 15 minutes before her wedding is scheduled to begin, Maturo and her coterie of bridesmaids (or, “wenches” as she calls the flock of women clad in period costumes), line up for a processional through the fairgrounds. A swarm of red-coat soldiers pours in around them.

“Forward march!” yells the first solider, as the army begins marching left, left, left, right, left.

“Joy to the bride!” he yells again.

“Joy to the bride!” the other soldiers call back.

Maturo blushes as she clutches her bouquet, flanked by the men in red. It’s a 10-minute walk through the grounds, and all eyes are on her as a group of fair-goers clusters around the dirt path she walks down toward the cathedral. Phones fly out to record the moment. There are smiles, and bemused looks. One woman whispers to her friend, “Are these actors? Is this real?”

“Joy to the groom!” that first soldier yells.

“Joy to the groom!” comes the chorus.

This is not exactly how Maturo first pictured this day. She’d been to a renaissance festival before, yes. But that was years ago, and she’s never felt a cultish affinity toward them. Bradley makes his way to Todd Mission once a year, though he doesn’t usually dress up. Still, Maturo — who worked at a visual and performing arts center in Florida before moving to Texas a week before her wedding — loves going all out for Halloween. And Bradley is a self-proclaimed nerd whose friends surprised him with their eagerness to dress in kilts for the day.

“Joy to all!” the first solider yells.

“Joy to all!” comes the chorus.

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‘Ultimate fairy tale’

Halfway to the cathedral, a horse and carriage await to take Maturo the rest of the way, as her attendants continue on foot. At the very front of the line, Brauner, who has supervised seven weddings today, glides in front of the processional dressed as a green-winged fairy. This Cinderella moment is many brides’ favorite part, she says.

By the time the processional reaches the cathedral, where the soldiers draw their swords for Maturo’s formal entrance, her bridesmaids are already tearing up. So are many of the guests — some of whom are dressed in period costumes, while others wear everything from jeans and leggings to more formal options. There is a little boy in a Peter Pan costume straight off a Halloween store rack. He sits, in his red feather cap, just one row in front of another boy dressed as a knight.

Originally Maturo and Bradley wanted to keep their wedding small. Five people max. But when they decided to host it at the festival, it quickly ballooned. People they thought would surely decline their invite instead booked flights and road trips from far-flung corners of the country.

“I had never heard of anything like this,” said Maturo’s mother, Sharon Longo. “But it seems like it would suit them, and I thought it was a really cool idea.”

Still, she didn’t want this day to come. Longo’s first words to Bradley when she met him were: “Don’t take my daughter to Texas.”

Now, a year-and-a-half later, she sits in the front row, dressed in a green and white Renaissance gown, her hair artfully braided from an early afternoon appointment at one of the fair vendor’s stands. She watches as Maturo and Bradley say their vows — first to each other, and then a third set, as Maturo whispers promises to Bradley’s son, who will become her stepson.

Fairgoers peep through strands of ivy to catch a glimpse of what’s going on inside. A bagpiper begins to play a recessional, and Brauner flits away in her fairy costume to the next event on her long to-do list. In addition to these dozens of weddings among the turkey legs and jousting contests, she also has to plan for a slate of five staged proposals coming up this season.

“I know most people wouldn’t think it,” Brauner says. “But this is the ultimate fairy tale experience.”

maggie.gordon@chron.com

twitter.com/MagEGordon

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