St. Francis Xavier College Church

Have been looking forward to seeing this church since my daughter got accepted into SLU. It’s the most beautiful and Gothic church I’ve seen outside of the Vatican. Everything about is reflects the catholic church in the sense of spirituality

Potential Brides and Grooms: Beautiful church for a wedding venue, however, the wedding coordinator and music coordinator are exceedingly difficult to work with. We had our wedding date for over a year and played phone tag and email tag the entire year. We finally met the wedding coordinator, Ruth Cochran, the night of the wedding.
They are inflexible in the extreme and have a racket as it applies to the music. They set the price of $ 175 for the cantor, $ 175 for the pianist, and you must use their pianist who happens to be the music coordinator. It is another $ 175 a pop for each musician if you want strings — again they choose, you cannot bring in your own. You can bring your own priest, which I would suggest because the three times throughout the year when we were in town the priest and the congregation were irreverent, not even kneeling before the Lamb of God.
Having a wedding in this beautiful church is like taking your kids to a old person’s house and being told over and over «don’t touch that, stay away from that». They are unfriendly and do not do anything obvious to «coordinate» a wedding. There is a small closet like room for the bride and wedding party to get ready which the coordinators will not give you a key or the combination for the door. There is no easy way to lock up any valuables. I will give credit where credit is due – the person in charge of monitoring our use of the facility let us stay a little longer than the 30 minutes allotted for pictures after the ceremony which was greatly appreciated!
It is a beautiful church; but for the $ 900 use fee (which has since gone up), there are a lot of beautiful churches in St. Louis. Save yourself a year of anxiety and choose another wedding venue. Good Luck!

Beautiful church on SLU’s campus.

I finally got a chance to go inside this beautiful church not too long ago.
Its quite big and magnificent on the inside as it is on the outside.
You pass it all the time going to the Fox. You can’t miss it. Its on the SLU campus and I hear its one of the places to get married if you can get yourself on the wait list and don’t mind waiting a few years.

This is a gorgeous church in the heart of the St. Louis University campus. There is some street parking in the area and a garage a few blocks away. If you have a good wedding host, they will pick up the tab for some valet parking.
The inside of the church is old school. Lots of stained glass windows and high ceilings with a big entrance area and those really big steps out in front.
The wedding was really organized and the MOB (mother of the bride) told me that the wedding planner at the church is very organized and really knows how to run the show.
The downside on that is that LOTS of people want to get married here and on the weekends, this place can get busy.
So if this is a destination for your future nuptials, sign up fast!

St. Francis has the last chance mass for St. Louis. Paired with SLU, their Sunday 10PM mass is packed with tons of college students atoning for the weekend. The church itself is beautiful. The priests are fairly orthodox too, despite their more liberal Jesuit background. The downside is that its really loud before mass. And despite being packed and having a beautiful choir, the participation during mass is something to be desired. And they sing «Go make a difference» at the end of every mass. Worst song ever… hippies… Blech…

The college church of SLU is very beautiful, mostly because it was designed before the catastrophe that was Vatican II, in which all churches were deigned to be ugly going forward.
The church is in the Gothic style, with very detailed and lovely stained glass windows, and marble altar pieces.
Mostly deserted and quiet during daytime hours. Stop in and look around or sit down and have some moments of silence or reflection or prayer.

I went to a wedding here and it was absolutely gorgeous. The aisle is 100 feet long. The stain glass is striking. The wedding coordinator is very good at her job and makes sure that things are running right on time.
The reception immediately followed the 7pm wedding in the church ballroom and it was very nice. The catering was done by Russo’s and the food was well prepared.
As far as I know, there is only street parking unless there is a show at the Fox and then the garages are open. It is required to put money in the meters unitl 10pm Monday-​Saturday. I am sure this is because of the Fox and the City does not want to miss out on all revenue generated from those Friday and Saturday shows. Bring lots of change! It is $ 0.75/hour for a meter. Some meters have a 90 minute max. Be sure to read them carefully.