St. Paul’s University Club hosts wedding that goes ‘disastrously’ wrong

Yellowish rainwater dripped onto the heads of guests and splattered the guestbook at Fahim and Rachel Rashid’s wedding last fall. The food was cold, the newlyweds said, and some guests had to eat wedding cake with their hands because silverware was not provided.

The setting? St. Paul’s historic University Club, the Summit Avenue institution that has sat on a bluff above the city for more than a century.

For almost a year, the Rashids said in an interview, they waited for owner John Rupp to refund the $16,000 he promised them at a meeting days after the nightmare ceremony — or the slightly smaller amount that a small claims court judge ordered him to pay this spring. On Wednesday, after he was contacted by a Minnesota Star Tribune reporter, Rupp gave the couple a $16,000 check.

But Fahim Rashid said he still wants the public to know about their disappointing experience at the 111-year-old University Club. “People don’t understand the emotional impact that this has had on our families, on my wife and on myself,” he said.

Rupp confirmed that he made the payment to the couple but declined to comment for this story.

The club’s wedding organizer ghosted the Rashids for months leading up to the ceremony, the couple said, and did not make contact until a meeting with Rupp a few weeks before their big day.

On the day of the ceremony, Rachel Rashid said, she was led — in her wedding gown — to an entry room where guests were mingling, taking away her chance to debut it as she walked down the aisle. She said she was quickly whisked to a bathroom, where she began sobbing.

“You’ve got that one shot and that one picture and idea of how it’s going to go, and when it goes that disastrously different than what you pictured, it sucks,” she said.

During the evening reception, rain leaked through spots in the roof and onto guests, the couple said, and staff put out water pitchers and buckets to catch the discolored water.

In November 2023, a week after an agreed deadline for Rupp to refund the couple, the Rashids filed in small claims court.

Rupp bought the University Club in 1985. The building was completed in 1913 and opened to members that year, according to the venue’s website. It’s one of St. Paul’s oldest institutions and was based on a model of alumni clubs established in England for such renowned universities as Oxford and Cambridge, St. Paul-based Professor Lisa Heinrich wrote in a 2019 article on the building’s history. Rachel Rashid also wrote about her experience in a cautionary Reddit post.

The club is at 420 Summit Av. and features a Tudor-style edifice built into a ravine. The taller back side is seven stories; four stories are visible from the street. It has attracted many prominent St. Paul members and visitors, including the city’s best-known writer, F. Scott Fitzgerald, who attended parties there. The club includes a main dining room, a bar, a pool and a tennis court.

Rupp, a prominent businessman in St. Paul, owns a variety of properties, including the W.A. Frost and Co. restaurant. He was responsible for revitalizing the historic St. Paul Athletic Club building downtown, although its last tenant left the building in July and Rupp said he wants to sell it. As of July, he owed more than $10 million to lender M360 for the property, according to a Ramsey County District Court ruling that he defaulted on his mortgage.

Court records show he has had financial struggles with some other properties.

In March, Rupp was sued by Wisconsin-based Pillar Bank for a condo at 79 Western Av. N., after he and his company, 79 Western LLC, failed to make payments on a loan of more than $1 million since October 2023, according to the civil complaint.

Rupp did not appear in court for the case, a judge wrote in court documents, and on Aug. 16 he and several of his companies were ordered to pay the bank roughly $1.1 million.

After a tour of the University Club months before the wedding, the Rashids said, the facility appealed to them because they didn’t want a generic ballroom and hotel wedding venue. The University Club fit the part perfectly, they said.

“It’s a dream come true; it’s everything you want in terms of character,” Fahim Rashid said. “It just it’s not being taken care of the way it deserves.”