Chris Pratt and Katherine Schwarzenegger’s Wedding, 2019
A June wedding at San Ysidro Ranch, the Montecito hideaway where the Kennedys honeymooned, after six sessions of premarital counseling. A quiet California wedding with a practical lesson inside it.
Chris Pratt and Katherine Schwarzenegger married in June 2019 at San Ysidro Ranch, a cottage resort in Montecito that has been sheltering famous couples for generations. The wedding was private and family-centered, and the most useful thing to come out of it was not a dress or a guest list but something Pratt said later: that the couple had worked through, in advance, the small questions that can trouble a marriage, down to when the Christmas music starts.
| At a glance | |
|---|---|
| Date | Saturday, June 8, 2019 |
| Place (ceremony) | San Ysidro Ranch, Montecito, California |
| Reception | San Ysidro Ranch |
| The dress (designer) | Armani Privé, by Giorgio Armani |
The couple
Katherine Schwarzenegger is the daughter of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver. Pratt has said that he first saw her at church in Hollywood, where he had gone with his son, Jack. The couple began dating in 2018 and became engaged on January 14, 2019. Pratt had previously been married to the actor Anna Faris, from 2009 until their divorce was finalized in October 2018; their son, Jack, was born in 2012.
The ceremony
San Ysidro Ranch occupies land that was once part of a Spanish land grant, later a Franciscan mission farm and then a citrus ranch; its ranch house became the core of a small hotel in the 1890s. Today it has 41 cottages and suites on some 500 acres. It has a long record as a place for weddings and honeymoons: Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier married there, John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy honeymooned there (see Jacqueline Bouvier and John F. Kennedy’s wedding), and Melissa Etheridge and Linda Wallem married on the grounds in June 2014. Guests at the ranch stay in individual cottages rather than a hotel block, which is a large part of its appeal for a wedding weekend: everyone is close, and no one is on top of anyone else. Pratt and Schwarzenegger married there on Saturday, June 8, 2019, and in April 2020 Schwarzenegger described it simply: “I got married last June.”
Before the wedding
The detail from this marriage that is most worth borrowing concerns what happened before the ceremony. Pratt has explained that “part of getting married at St. Monica’s church is doing premarital counseling,” and that the couple did six sessions with a counselor he called “the best thing in the world.” The point, he said, is to find “300 potential landmines” and defuse them beforehand. One of their agreements: Christmas music may start on November 1, and the tree comes down by December 26.
It is a disarmingly ordinary example, and that is why it is useful. Many religious traditions, including the Catholic Church, ask couples to complete some form of marriage preparation, and couples of no particular faith can seek out the same thing from a counselor. For more on how different faiths approach the ceremony itself, see our guide to the order of the ceremony.
Why it mattered
This was not a wedding that set fashion trends. It mattered because it joined two public families, the Schwarzenegger-Shriver family and a leading Hollywood actor, with little fanfare, at a venue whose appeal is privacy, and because the couple talked afterward about preparation rather than spectacle.
Later history
The couple have three children: Lyla Maria, born in 2020; Eloise Christina, born in 2022; and Ford Fitzgerald, born in 2024.
Borrow the idea
Do premarital counseling, even if nobody requires it. Six sessions with a trusted counselor or clergy member, covering money, family, holidays and children, will do more for the marriage than anything on the day.
Write down your small agreements. Holidays, in-laws, who hosts what: settle a few before the wedding and keep the list somewhere you will find it. The Pratt rule on Christmas music is a good model precisely because it is specific, with dates rather than good intentions.
Choose a venue built for privacy. A cottage resort or country inn where guests stay on site keeps a weekend contained. Ask how many rooms there are, whether you can book them all, and what the venue’s policy is on photographers from outside.
Look to the venue’s history. A place with a long record of weddings will have a practiced team. Ask what they have learned; our planning guide lists the questions.
Written and edited by the Today’s Weddings editors. How we research and check what we publish is set out in our editorial standards. Spotted something wrong? Tell us.
