When Royals pitcher Alec Marsh proposed to his longtime girlfriend Makenna Harper in mid-November 2023, the rush was on. Not to get married, but to set a date.
Harper met Marsh at Arizona State University, where she played softball and he was on the baseball team. She knew what all baseball significant others know: There are only two months for a baseball wedding, November and December. Securing a date — not just for prospective venues, but to work around other engaged baseball couples — is nearly its own sport.
By the time they started looking, November 2024 was already filled up. Harper jumped when their venue in San Diego County was available on Dec. 7. Then Marsh’s teammate Bobby Witt Jr. popped the question to his girlfriend, Maggie Black, and the pair initially booked the same date for their pending nuptials.
“You are fighting for (wedding) days,” said Harper. “It’s almost like you get engaged and have to announce to the baseball world immediately what day you’re getting married.”
According to the wedding website The Knot, which surveyed nearly 10,000 couples last year, only 11 percent of weddings took place between December and February. The fall is most popular, with 42 percent of weddings landing between September and November. Baseball weddings operate on a different cycle, as players typically get engaged in one offseason and hurry to plan a wedding for the next.
“The holidays sort of take a backseat. Our offseason revolves around: What weddings are we going to and when is Alec training?” Harper said.
Black and Harper, who had become friends while in Kansas City, quickly realized the conundrum. They wanted to attend each other’s weddings and not force teammates to decide between the two. They were fortunate: Black was able to get her venue the following weekend, Dec. 14. Harper and Marsh postponed their honeymoon until the day after the Witts were scheduled to tie the knot so they can attend. (It’ll have been the third wedding in a four-week span for many Royals players, who attended Michael Massey and Jane DeJarld’s Mexico wedding on Nov. 23.)
A few players do get married in January, though everyone The Athletic spoke to said it can be even more hectic once the calendar flips: Pitchers are ramping up their throwing progressions, and position players are often locked into their workouts. It’s not uncommon for players to trickle into their respective spring training complexes later that month.
Weather and travel can also be a headache, making the preference for most baseball couples to say “I do” in November or the first half of December after proposing before spring training the year before.
“Last year we were the last people to get engaged,” said Karra McKinstry, whose husband, Zach, popped the question in early February and is part of a Detroit Tigers team that had seven engagements last offseason. “You looked on Instagram and every day it was, ‘OK, who’s next?’”
When Justin Verlander was planning his wedding to model Kate Upton after the 2016 season, the pair fell in love with a medieval church in Tuscany, Italy. Verlander was a member of the rebuilding Tigers at the time. The playoffs were a pipe dream. Their date, Nov. 4, 2017, seemed safe.
“We decided only one thing could screw up our plans: Game 7 of the World Series,” Verlander, who was traded to the Houston Astros midseason, said at the time. “Sure enough we find ourselves in Game 7 of the World Series.”
The Astros prevailed, defeating the Los Angeles Dodgers. Verlander missed the ensuing championship parade to hop on a flight. He and Upton were beat to their own wedding week festivities by their guests, some who FaceTimed them to tease: This venue is beautiful, if only you were here to see it!
Not everyone is as willing as Verlander to roll the dice.
Pitcher Sean Manaea, who got engaged to Talat Mirmalek on New Year’s Eve, made it clear the first weekend in November was off limits. And it was a good thing, as Manaea’s New York Mets stunned quite a few people in clinching a playoff spot in Game 161 and went on to beat the Brewers in the wild card and the Phillies in the Division Series. The Mets ended up losing to the eventual champions, the Dodgers, in the NL Championship Series. But had the Dodgers and Yankees gone to a Game 7 in this year’s World Series, it would have been on Saturday, Nov. 2.
“That first weekend (in November) was out. Sean said it would be the biggest jinx,” said Mirmalek, who instead booked a Nov. 16 wedding in Indianapolis. The stress for Mirmalek as the Mets got deeper into October wasn’t so much the wedding details. The pair used a wedding planner for the 200-person affair — at a venue they didn’t have time to see in person — and many Mets wives, having been through the same calendar, were eager to offer Mirmalek advice on planning a wedding in the postseason.
The pre-wedding jitters came from what the couple decided in early October: If the Mets won the World Series, they would invite not just the whole team, but the entire organization.
“That was really stressful, thinking about how to seat everyone. Like, would you like to come to our wedding and just stand?” Mirmalek joked. “It was a great run, but, yeah, I’m glad we didn’t have to worry about that.”
When Jodi Fick Rizzo started planning her 2019 wedding to Nationals general manager Mike Rizzo, the team was on its way to a 19-31 start. The World Series was not top of mind. Rizzo, a baseball lifer, had long refused to even RSVP to November weddings in the first two weeks of the month. He thought it was bad juju.
As the Nationals stunned the baseball world, Jodi carried around a binder that whole October, working through RSVP lists and menu options on the team plane. She was able to attend her bachelorette party because the Nationals swept the Cardinals in the NL Championship Series, granting them a rare few days off for a trip to Las Vegas.
The Rizzos ultimately wed on Nov. 16, 2019 in Jamaica. The date left just enough time for the Nationals to beat the Astros in Game 7 in Houston, march in a ticker-tape parade and attend a White House celebration before the pair flew off for a wedding in which “We are the Champions” became part of the event playlist.
“You have such a small window to get married,” Jodi said. “Especially as a GM, Mike has the GM meetings and the Winter Meetings, too. I’m glad we did it that first offseason after we got engaged. It was hectic, but it was the highest of highs.”
And perhaps the hangover of all hangovers. As Mike told reporters in early December that year: “I’ve been drunk for a month.”
Being a guest can be just as hectic during baseball’s wedding season, as it’s not unusual to be double- or triple-booked on weekends in November and December, prompting tough choices or a lot of travel.
Sean Murphy attended Manaea’s welcome party — the pair played together in Oakland — and then flew to Atlanta the next day to watch his current Braves teammate Michael Harris get married. That way, he could be there for both players, who got hitched on the same day.
Mirmalek said their wedding had players from the A’s, Padres and Mets, as well as Manaea’s college baseball friends, with Francisco Lindor’s eldest daughter, Kalina, serving as one of the flower girls.
In the Marsh/Harper wedding, all six of Marsh’s groomsmen are baseball players, and four are currently in the big leagues: Tigers first baseman Spencer Torkelson, Miami Marlins pitcher and former Royal Anthony Veneziano, Twins pitcher Griffin Jax and fellow Royals pitcher Jonathan Bowlan.
Torkelson was part of the wave of Tigers players who got engaged in the last offseason, proposing to his girlfriend Makenna Mattei in January. The pair weren’t able to make the tight turnaround work and are instead planning for 2026.
Even with the best planning and coordination, conflicts are sometimes unavoidable. Brewers teammates Tobias Meyers and Bryan Hudson both got married on Dec. 14. When Meyers proposed to his fiancee, Leah Angelillo, last November, he was still in the minor leagues. Hudson and his fiancee, Kailin Haug, who were engaged on Dec. 28, 2023, picked the 14th because it’s Haug’s favorite number and it fit baseball’s narrow scheduling parameters. Neither knew of the other’s plans until well into the season. There were no hard feelings.
The Angelillo/Meyers wedding, which was in Boca Raton, invited only teammates in the Florida area already: Devin Williams (who was traded to the Yankees on Friday), Joe Ross and bullpen catcher Christian Correa. The Hudson/Haug wedding was a family-focused event in Missouri.
“Every time I refresh my feed, someone has gotten engaged or married,” Angelillo said, laughing. “I guess we will all be celebrating the same anniversaries.”
Eloping is becoming more of an option, something veteran baseball wives often confess would have been a lot easier.
That’s the route the McKinstrys went, as Karra and Zach went to the courthouse in Detroit over the All-Star break and got married with just his parents present. They decided to have a party to celebrate on Dec. 7 with around 60 people in Arizona.
The event was planned to be low-key, Karra said, but was still a considerable amount of stress. By the time they got engaged in February and started looking at dates, there were just two left in December for their venue. One of those dates was very close to Christmas. The McKinstrys chose the other, which unsurprisingly was on the same day as the wedding of another Tiger: Dillon Dingler.
(Illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic. Photos: Michael Saab Photography; Chelsey Barhorst Photography; courtesy Karra McKinstry)
