This originally ran in the 2026 Local Love supplement in the June issue of Baltimore magazine.
Wedding Date May 3, 2025
After meeting him on a dating app, Chase Sanders surprised Jon Schadt with a proposal at Castillo San Felipe del Morro in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The whole thing was disguised as a group friend trip. At first, when Chase got on one knee, Jon thought he was joking and laughingly told him to get up. But ultimately, he realized it was real and said yes in front of a magical sunset overlooking the ocean surrounded by their best friends. They wanted to bottle up that feeling for their Eastern Shore wedding—a day celebrating the outdoors, earth tones, friendship, celestial elements, and, of course, love.
“For the wedding ceremony, we wanted to include our moms in some way that wasn’t the traditional walk down the aisle,” says Chase, a management consultant. So they came up with a plan where Chase’s mom and Jon’s mom and stepmom would choose a virtue to bestow upon the couple and write a short speech around why. “They shared those one at a time during the ceremony, and it was beautiful,” says Chase. “Not a dry eye.” Another tearjerker—Chase and Jon, a tech implementation strategist, wrote individual letters to all 100 guests that were placed in envelopes with their table numbers.
But the day was also about letting loose and having fun. Since Chase loves astrology, they included a tarot card reader and a birth chart astrologist. “There was a line the whole evening,” he says. They had an artist paint portraits of each guest, danced down the aisle for both their entrance (Mariah Carey’s “Always Be My Baby”) and exit (Cher’s “Take Me Home”), and their dog, Jezebel, made a surprise guest appearance.
The only gaffe was when the DJ accidentally skipped to the next song before Beyoncé’s “Crazy in Love” was over. Laughs Chase, “Jon stopped the DJ and was like, you have to put that back on.”
CAKE Cakes by Abby CATERER Chesapeake Chef Service FLORAL DESIGN Wildfleur & Whimsy Grooming The Burrow (hair) GROOMS Billy Reid Suits with Style by Blum HONEYMOON Amalfi Coast LOCATION Private venue, St. Michaels MUSIC Ruben Najera (DJ) with Signature Talent Group OFFICIANT Adrián Gonzales, friend of the couple PhotographER Nessa K Photography STATIONERY Velvet Fox Designs TRANSPORTATION Bayside Limousines WEDDING PLANNER Tira Lynn Events