FRANKLINTON, La – Love is the air above a place that’s downright royal.
You’d think you were in England? France? Ireland? No. No way. Yes way.
This is Louisiana. And this place is the Louisiana Castle.
WGNO News with a Twist features guy Wild Bill Wood is, as always, confused.
So Wild Bill travels to Franklinton, Louisiana, about an hour and a half north of New Orleans.
That’s where the Louisiana Castle, a replica of an English Norman Keep Castle, sits on ten acres.
It’s a castle with its own king and queen. That’s husband and wife, Steve and Mary Thomas.
Steve was a cop. Mary sold insurance. Now they run the castle, happily ever after.
The king and queen give tours of the castle to commoners. The commoners are people who want to rent the castle for parties or proms or weddings.
The Louisiana Castle is mostly a wedding chapel. More than one hundred marriages a year take place here.
Steve and Mary can tell you all about the weddings.
There’s the wedding that had a horse. The weddings that had dogs. And, you can’t forget, the vampire wedding.
The Louisiana Castle is really a love story. A doctor built it for his high school sweetheart.
That was back in 1989.
You don’t have to get married to stay at the castle. You can actually spend the night here in the royal bedroom.
And it’s still the place for love stories today, like the king and queen, Steve and Mary Thomas.
They’ve known each other since they were both four-years-old. They’ve been married now for 30 years.
