The moment Chicago P.D. fans have been waiting for for too long finally happened during Season 12’s finale: Kim Burgess (Marina Squerciati) and Adam Ruzek (Patrick John Flueger) finally got married!
After a tumultuous romance, three engagements, a house, and an adoption, the couple are finally official. They tied the knot in a relaxed church ceremony, and of course, their daughter Makayla (Ramona Edith Williams) and Adam Ruzek’s father Bob (Jack Coleman) were standing by their sides. And thankfully, we’ve been promised that this happy ending will stick.
“It’s really fun,” showrunner Gwen Sigan says of the ceremony’s production process. “It felt like we were planning a real one.”
In classic P.D. fashion, the romantic scenes of the wedding were intercut with Chapman sitting in the pews getting her heart broken by Voight (Jason Beghe) — but that didn’t take away from the romance.
“We don’t get to do stuff like this on our show very often,” SIgan says. “It felt very different.”
She continues, “We wanted it to feel somewhat traditional, I think for Burgess, but also really low key and easy and simple, and not stuffy. So that’s really where all the conversations came out of. What would these two people actually want and actually do?”
Kevin had a very special job in the wedding
Standing up on the altar were the most important people in Kim and Adam’s lives: Makayla, Bob, and Kevin Atwater (LaRoyce Hawkins). Yes, Atwater was tasked with the incredibly special job of serving as Adam’s best man, which shows just how close the Intelligence team is when they’re not running the streets of Chicago.
In fact, the entire crew were in attendance at the nuptials: Voight with Chapman, Kiana Cook (Toya Turner), Dante Torres (Benjamin Levy Aguilar), and Trudy Platt (Amy Morton).
Sigan explains, “I think we really came at it from, ‘What would these two people want?’ Like, real world, what would they want? And it felt like they would really want a day to celebrate, that they would want everybody there, that they would certainly want to do something that Makayla would remember. And I think it was probably really important for Ruzek to have his father there.”
The importance of the church venue
The traditional and humble location of Kim and Adam’s ceremony was completely intentional.
“In our minds that was like the church that he went to as a little boy in Canaryville,” Sigan says. “It felt like this would have been a neighborhood thing. Like they could have driven themselves to the wedding.”
There was a surprise Chicago Fire cameo
Alongside Trudy at the wedding was her husband Randall “Mouch” McHolland (Christian Stolte), who all One Chicago fans know is a series regular on Chicago Fire. Mouch made another P.D. appearance earlier this season during the action-packed crossover event which saw Platt nearly lose her life. Thankfully, she made a full recovery and was able to help take down the villain of the season, Reid, in the finale.
Kim’ wedding dress was picked by fans
In the weeks leading up to the big day, Squerciati had some fun with fans by including them in her wedding dress shopping for Burgess, allowing followers to weigh in on their favorite gown.
“We had a situation where the wedding was sort of on script thrown together, and they were allowing us to do a bridal gown, but they didn’t want it to be too much, and yet I wanted it to be spectacular,” One Chicago’s costume designer Susan Kaufmann told Swooon. “It’s pretty easy on Marina, so we tried on and tried on, and we narrowed it down [to three dresses]. We stepped away, we came back, and tried those three on. Again, I know she was doing a lot of posting to let people choose which was funny to watch, and it started to sway her a little.”
They eventually settled on a “simple” and “beautiful” figure-flattering gown with a plunging neckline and mid-thigh slit, pairing it with a veil.
“In a wedding where we had to be kind of simple, it just gave it a little extra something. And we both immediately loved it,” Kaufmann said of she and Squerciati.
There was a “back and forth” regarding this detail of Adam’s suit
While it was relatively easy for Kaufmann and Flueger to choose Adam’s wedding suit off of a rack of options, the tie (or lack of) was another story.
“The big question back and forth was tie, no tie, or bow tie,” she explained to Swooon. “We both really loved the no tie. And then when we brought it to the higher ups, they were like, ‘Well, can you send a tie on the day? I’m not sure.’ But it was fine. He ended up going no tie.”
Kim and Adam’s daughter, played by child actress Ramona Edith Williams, adorably served as her mother’s maid of honor. Kaufmann explained that since they wanted her look to be age appropriate, perfecting Makayla’s dress for the big day required a little extra touch of creativity.
“She’s tween, so she’s not really a little girl anymore,” Kaufmann said. “She’s almost a teenager. When you look at dresses while shopping, the little girl dresses, you just see very little girl, and the women’s dresses are just too mature for her. I think I walked in Bloomingdale’s, and I saw that dress, and I was like, ‘My god, the butterflies. It’s perfection.’ It was an adult dress, and we took it apart and remade it and fit it to her so that she could wear.”
