Rachel Sullivan
By Jen Banowetz
May 2026 View more Spotlight
A marriage of two careers
Just like theater, a wedding is a big production. And perhaps nobody knows that better than Rachel Sullivan, an actor-turned-wedding-planner who’s now back onstage as mother of the bride, Mrs. Banks, in Drury Lane Theatre’s production of Father of the Bride, running through May 31.
After earning her acting degree at Northwestern and a stint in California, Sullivan returned to Chicago, where she spent two decades in the wedding industry, orchestrating more than 500 weddings, big and small.
Q: What’s it like being back in the business, acting onstage again?
A: It’s just full circle. I mean, I always, always, always missed acting, and my whole creative business MO for my event planning company was: I [have] a background of theater, and I always thought of weddings as theater. And so that was what I would tell my brides—this is a huge production.
Q: So, the obvious question is how your wedding experience translates into your role in Father of the Bride.
A: I definitely know the moms very well—I really do. I’m playing Mrs. Banks, but it’s really funny for me. There’s a scene in the play toward the end where Mr. and Mrs. Banks are freaking out that, “Oh my God, everything’s not done, and the party’s in two hours, and nothing is set up!” And [the wedding planner] Missoula comes in. He’s like, “It’s all good. It’s all good.” It all works out. It’s magic, and that’s 100 percent exactly true. Everything is last minute. Everything is chaotic. It’s an orchestrated symphony.
The director asked me a couple of times like, “Well, how would this go in a wedding and how would that go?” I’m like, “Here’s how we’re going to coordinate that.” It’s very easy to slip back into wedding planning mode and give my spiel, and it’s really fun.
Q: How has it been working at Drury?
A: Oh my God, I’m in love with it. Everybody’s so nice. The theater is spectacular. I’m having the time of my life. Everybody in this cast is just delicious. Michael [Heitzman], the director, is fabulous. He’s a joy. Stage management, costuming, everybody, this is the nicest group of people I’ve ever worked with. I keep telling my husband I would work with this cast and crew for the rest of my life. It’s wonderful.
Q: What’s been most challenging about this play?
A: Oh, the physicality of this production is off the rails. None of us had any idea. It is really quite a physical show, and we are having the best time doing it, but we’re definitely all exhausted at the end of the night.
Q: What do you hope the audience takes away from this production?
A: It’s just this message of love and joy, and that it doesn’t matter how big the party is—it’s what’s behind it. And I knew that with a lot of my clients too, like they would get so wrapped up in “What does this party mean and what does this venue mean? And my flowers have to be bigger than her flowers,” and all this stuff. And at the end of the day, it’s just about the love that’s behind it and family and the organized chaos of life and pivoting when you need to pivot and resting when you need to rest. I think people will be very happy and, well, with a tear in their eye. We all got teary yesterday when we were working on the final scene. It’s a sweet little play, but I noticed we were all getting pretty emotional.
Photo: Justin Barbin (productIon)
