“Chris and I met through Charlie Pie—one of my best friends from the University of Virginia and one of Chris’s oldest friends from growing up in Melbourne, Australia,” Merrill Hermann says of the man who would ultimately play matchmaker for her and her now-husband, Christopher Baillieu. When they all landed in New York after graduation, Charlie introduced the pair almost immediately. They hit it off—and remained “just friends” for quite a while.
Five years after they first met, they found themselves single at the same time. “We went on a date, and something just clicked,” Merrill remembers. “Turns out, by using extremely vague language, Chris had more or less conned me into it. In the middle of dinner, he leaned over and said, ‘You know this is a date, right?‘ I howled laughing, and the phrase made its way onto the cocktail napkins at our wedding. It’s a sentence I’ll never forget!”
After three-and-a-half years together, Chris proposed at his family’s farm in Australia—but he’d been carrying the ring for months. It even accompanied them on a European vacation, until Merrill casually mentioned that whenever he proposed, she needed it to happen somewhere she could privately scream at the top of her lungs. Chris took note and waited a few more weeks.
On the day of the proposal, Merrill was busy admiring a group of kangaroos when Chris called out, “Quick, there’s an echidna over here!” “By the time I reached him, he was down on one knee,” Merrill recalls. “I wish I could remember all the sweet things he said, but I started screaming somewhere after the first sentence. Just as he’d planned, no one heard a thing.”
There may not have been an echidna there that day, but the elusive creature ultimately earned a starring role in the wedding. It appeared on the couple’s invitation suite and throughout the weekend’s paper pieces. “She was depicted drinking a glass of bubbly on the escort cards we gave to each of our guests,” Merrill notes.
From the start of the planning process, Merrill and Chris knew they wanted a wedding venue that felt deeply personal. They ultimately found it in Merrill’s hometown of St. Louis—and in a place that was part of her family’s story. “We chose my hometown of St. Louis, and ultimately, a location that had been sitting under our noses all along: my great-grandparents’ former home,” Merrill shares.
When thinking about the wedding’s overall aesthetic, Merrill knew exactly what she didn’t want. “I knew from the beginning that I didn’t want anything that felt too traditionally ‘wedding,’” she says. “I wanted loud color, unexpected details, and moments that felt a little surprising.”
To pull it off, the couple enlisted OTM Directory Planner Augusta Cole, who helped translate that instinct into everything from the table linens to the bar backdrops—and kept the bride sane in the process.
“My favorite detail was the installation over the dance floor,” Merrill says. “Late in the process, I mentioned that I felt like the ceiling needed just one more thing, and Augusta came back with it as a surprise.”
The weekend began with a welcome party inspired by Chris’s mother, Sam. “Bruce Keebaugh, who has worked with the Baillieus for many events—including both of Chris’s siblings’ weddings—understood her design directive immediately and somehow translated the feeling of the farm in Australia into a night in St. Louis,” the bride shares.
For this occasion, Merrill wore a custom Fanny Liautard look. “I loved the simplicity of the silk dress,” she says. “But adding the ‘angel wings’ gave it just the right amount of movement and drama.” Photographer Erich McVey and OTM Directory Videographer Julia Kentner were there to capture the evening.
On the morning of the wedding, Merrill got ready with makeup artist Colby Smith and hairstylist Cassie Tichenor before slipping into her strapless Oscar de la Renta wedding dress. Outside, a grassy stretch beside the lake had been transformed with florals by Jackson Durham and Mr. Fowler’s Flowers. And Merrill wouldn’t be arriving there by car . . .
“My dad enforced the family tradition of arriving at the ceremony by Clydesdale-drawn carriage,” Merrill says. “The ceremony was iconic in every way I wasn’t expecting it to be.”
The bride’s two-and-a-half-year-old nephew sprinted down the aisle, and during the service, he and his sister took turns playing with Merrill’s cathedral-length veil. “Their parents spent much of that time attempting to quietly usher them away,” Merrill laughs. “I couldn’t have cared less—I loved every second of it.”
If the ceremony was unforgettable, their entrance into the reception wasn’t far behind. As “Every Day” by Eric Prydz began to play, Chris grabbed Merrill’s hand and the newlyweds took off. “We went running around the tent, weaving through our friends and family, my shoes only half on my feet and threatening to fly off and hit someone in the face at any moment,” Merrill remembers. “We were completely dumbfounded by the feeling in the air.”
After a seated dinner by Butler’s Pantry, the Georgia Bridgwater Orchestra of Jordan Kahn Music Co. got everyone out of their seats—and the night kicked into high gear from there.
As the dinner gave way to the after-party, Merrill traded her Oscar de la Renta for a sparkly Cucculelli Shaheen dress, which Styled by Sam paired with a vintage choker.
The next chapter of the night took its inspiration from Cardinal Puff, an old drinking game that has been played in Merrill’s family for generations. “It involves a very specific way of drinking a beer, and once you get it right, you’re a Cardinal for life,” Merrill explains. “The only problem with explaining it is that the first rule is that I’m not allowed to explain the rules. Needless to say, it was the perfect inspiration for the after-party.” Though there were many attempts that night, only a select few were inducted into the Cardinal Club.
From there, the fête moved into the transformed Carriage House in the old stables, where DJ Eyal Agai presided over the crowd from an elevated perch. “Augusta and her team designed a set of steps to situate the DJ on, which very quickly became the best decor prop of the night,” Merrill recalls. “There’s nothing an after-party loves more than a platform!”
