It’s Wedding Season and UVA’s Newly Restored Chapel is in High Demand

Organist Barbara Moore arrives about 45 minutes early for the 2:30 nuptials, lifts the music stand and turns on the organ. How many times has she performed in the Chapel? “I would say between 500 and 600 weddings,” she says humbly. “I’ve been doing this a long time.”

So long, in fact, the adjunct piano and organ instructor in UVA’s Department of Music performed her first wedding in the UVA Chapel when she was 16. “That was approximately 1968,” she says. “I think I got $25 or something.”

Soon the bride, Brady Brown, and her party arrive, gathering in another anteroom in the chapel. She wears a simple, floor-length white dress that was supposed to be accompanied by her “something old,” the veil her mother Coakley wore at her own wedding. But in all the hubbub, Coakley forgot it and a friend of the family stole out of the chapel, ceremony already underway, to fetch the tulle dressing in time for the exchange of vows.

How It All Started

UVA’s gothic chapel reopened to the public in January following a painstaking restoration process that took a year. Designers painted the walls Grenada green, installed state-of-the-art lighting and brought new luster to the wood ceiling, pews and floors.

Brady Snipes exits the chapel following the wedding. (Photo by Kelly West, University Communications)

The cornerstone for the nondenominational chapel was laid in 1885. The space seats 250 people and typically hosts more than 350 events a year. Weddings have always been a highlight, with 17 booked through the end of the year. All but one fall on a Saturday, the most popular wedding day of the year, according to The Knot.

Brady Brown and William Snipes, both systems engineering graduates, met in their second year at UVA in a probability course, studying how likely something is to happen. It was a prophetic meeting. Soon the pair were on their first date at The Virginian on the Corner. “So, a very UVA experience,” Brown says. “That was the spring of 2016.”

After graduating together, they both landed in Cleveland, where Snipes proposed to Brown in early 2023 as they walked along the Cuyahoga River with their dogs Kenny and Willow.

A Poignant Remembrance 

The wedding ceremony lasts about 40 minutes and then it’s time for family photos in front of the altar. As the wedding photographer stages people in and outside her frame, the mother of the bride stands by, a bouquet in her hands. Attached to the ribbon-bound stems is an ornamental charm, surrounded in filigree, holding a photo of two, smiling young women.

“Brady’s sister is Delaney Brown,” Coakley says, explaining the significance of the photo. “She had a brain tumor and passed away in October, and she was maid of honor.”

The bouquet is Delaney’s. A 2016 graduate of UVA’s McIntire School of Commerce, Delaney would have been 30 this month.

“She was diagnosed in 2022 and made it about 19 months,” Coakley explains.

It was important to Brady that her sister be a significant presence at the ceremony, her mother says.

“So, she’s here with us, running the show like always. I can hear her going, ‘Mom, I would have remembered the veil,’” Coakley quips.

The wedding is over. The chapel is empty. With the sun still high in the sky, the newlyweds gather for more photos with the UVA Chapel as their backdrop.

The lone song sparrow sings,  joined by a chorus of chimney swifts, house finches and northern cardinals, their songs adding a sweet close to the day.