The Queen Set the Scene for This Couple’s Wilmington Wedding

The Queen in Wilmington served as the perfect setting for this wedding. Photos by Fuller Photography

When their original wedding venue didn’t work out, the Delaware couple opted for a unique venue in Wilmington for their winter nuptials. 

As a student at Philadelphia’s University of the Sciences, Bear, Delaware’s Victoria Drews paid a visit to some high school friends at the University of Delaware. It was there that she met Adam Engelson at a party, and the two quickly hit it off. Dating throughout college, they became inseparable, as life took them from their first apartment in Philadelphia to Los Angeles and back again to Wilmington.

A pharmacist resident with ChristianaCare, Victoria worked long hours, with Adam driving her to and from work. One morning, after dropping her off, Adam headed to a Philadelphia hotel suite, where he spent the day decorating the room with roses, candles, sentimental photos and a few of his future bride’s favorite things. He even hid a camera to capture the moment.

His work complete, Adam returned to pick up Victoria, explaining that he booked the room so they could visit their favorite Center City bars and crash at the hotel afterward. Adam led Victoria to the room, where he got down on one knee and asked her to marry him. The answer was yes—and they spent the rest of the weekend celebrating with family and friends.

Like so many other couples, Adam and Victoria had to reschedule their wedding day due to COVID-19. “It ended up being the best decision we could’ve made,” Andrew says. “We realized that the most important thing to us was to have fun on our wedding day, and the conventional wedding venue we’d originally chosen just wasn’t us.”

The couple rearranged their plans, choosing The Queen, a state-of-the-art music hall in Wilmington dating back to the 1800s. On that January day, temperatures dropped to about 30 degrees, setting the tone for the perfect winter wedding. “I felt so anxious leading up to the wedding day,” Victoria recalls. “But the minute I walked down the aisle, all the nerves went away.”

Adam and Victoria chose not to read their vows aloud, opting for a secret question the officiant sent to each a few days before the wedding. And then there was the dancing. “Our DJ was phenomenal and kept people on the dance floor,” Adam says.

“The entire night was beyond what we could have imagined,” adds Victoria.