Dinosaur bones, a famous author, and a white cape: Inside Daisy Foko and Eagles tight end Kylen Granson’s wedding

Tight end Kylen Granson is at his first Eagles training camp after signing with the team in March, but less than a month ago he was at the Field Museum in Chicago, getting married to Daisy Foko. The couple, who have been together since 2018, pulled out all the stops — from a dinosaur skeleton above the altar to award-winning author John Green (The Fault in Our Stars) officiating to an interactive fossil-dusting seating chart reveal.

Foko is a content creator known for her patented inventions, her podcast featuring guests like Neil deGrasse Tyson, and her lifestyle and history videos. When Granson popped the question in July 2024, she immediately started planning their perfect wedding, and she spoke with The Inquirer to share her favorite details of the day.

This Q&A has been edited for clarity and length.

A: We’re friends, we became friends through TikTok. I saw that John was in Indianapolis, and I was like, “Kylen loves your books, you guys have to meet.” And he was like, “Yeah, let’s get dinner.” And so we got dinner, and then I got to meet his wife, Sarah, for the first time. I love Sarah, and we’ve just been hanging out ever since. John used to come to a lot of the Colts games and open practices. He’s low-key a sports guy, although he’s more into soccer. And now we’re going to get him out to some Eagles games. We’ve got to get the Greens in green because really, he’s a Kylen Granson fan over everything else.

» READ MORE: Meet Daisy Foko: Inventor, influencer, podcaster — and the newest Eagles ‘WAG’

We were going to take him out to dinner to ask, but he’s been touring for his book so we just had to text him and ask him to officiate. He asked what the vibe was. Like, do we want it long, do we want it short? We just wanted him to speak to our relationship, since you’ve gone on so many double dates with us over the years. We basically left it up to him, and he did a great job. I mean, he’s one of the best romance authors ever. He talked about our relationship and how sweet we are together, and his experiences with love and humanity. He told a cute little personal anecdote about us, and then we did our vows, and it was beautiful. Kylen cried, I cried, then we got married.

A: Yes, we specifically wanted the dinosaur. Some people who get married there, they choose to not show the dinosaur. It’s a Spinosaurus, and it’s a cast of one. It’s not a real one above, but it was super cool. And the original floor plan, they had assumed we didn’t want the dinosaur in it, like when we first went to our design team, because most people don’t want the dinosaur in their ceremony. And I was like, “Oh, no, no. You got to move that wall back. We got to, we need to have the dinosaur in it, for sure.” And I was alone in the meetings — Kylen had OTAs — and I was like, “If we don’t have the dinosaur in there, I will be devastated, but Kylen will riot. Like, we need to have that dinosaur there.”

And then upstairs is where we had the after-party, and where the museum has the oldest and most complete Tyrannosaurus rex on Earth, Sue. We had a DJ booth next to the T. rex up there, and it was sick.

I was just happy that Sue got to see it. Someone in my comments said something actually very poetic. They said, “I kind of like the idea of getting married next to something like a dinosaur, just because it’s like, ‘I know that you guys died a really long time ago, but we still are thinking about you, and we want you to see this.’”

A: Yeah, that was something we bonded over when we first met. Kylen is a huge nerd, and a lot of people just see the football player thing, and they don’t realize what a dork he is.

Kylen knew I was looking at venues. The Field Museum was the first one I physically went to, and we talked about it, because he ended up getting the venue for me as a surprise. Because when I saw the price breakdown, I was like, “I don’t know if we can get that. I don’t know about that. Like, that might be crazy.” But he told me after: “Once I saw the sparkles in your eyes about the dinosaurs, I knew I had to get you those dinosaurs. We can’t do it without the dinosaurs. No other venues are going be right, without those dinosaurs.”

A: Oh, I was obsessed with that. I was so excited. I knew that I wanted to do a dramatic invitation, and this came as a result of our invitations, where we ground up graham crackers, and then had the dinosaurs under there so you dust it and get the invitations out that way. So then, as a little tie-in with that and a leveled-up version of that, we were talking about ways to [do] seat charts. I didn’t just want a sign — like I was trying to take every element of a traditional wedding and twist it somehow, to make it like a reflection of us and our tastes and our weird personalities. So we had an interactive saxophone player go through during cocktail hour and when the guests came in, they did the dusting. So they had something exciting as they were coming in and transitioning through the different spaces.

A: A year prior to the wedding, I was in Chicago — actually, this whole thing is crazy foreshadowing for our wedding. So it was exactly a year earlier, I had just gotten engaged a week before, literally, and I was in Chicago because one of my best friends flew in from South Africa, and she flew in through Chicago. While we’re waiting for [a boat tour], there was this guy who was playing the saxophone on the corner, and he was so good that we filmed him.

And then unknowingly, a year later, we were planning our wedding music, and we ended up going with a DJ hybrid — where we had drums and a saxophone and then a DJ booth — so that way it could be a little bit of a mix of both a DJ and a band. And the sax player that we booked was that guy. I didn’t realize it was him, but my friend was like, “Did you notice something about that sax player?” I was like, “Yeah, I keep looking at that guy. I swear to God, I know that guy.” And she had the video, and she pulled it up, and we knew it was that guy. And that was exactly a calendar year prior. Is that not insane? And we showed him the video, and he was like, “That is crazy.“ So then ultimately, even though I didn’t have cash back then, he definitely got it paid back later.

A: Yes, I wanted him to be in white, we had a color blocked wedding. We always watch the Met Gala every year, and every year I crash out over the menswear. They’d never do anything interesting. I’m like, “I don’t need to see another tuxedo. All I want from you is I want you to pick something that reflects your personality. And your personality is not basic.” So I just keep that in mind. He came back a little while later, wanting to do a cape. And I was like, “[Expletive] yeah, that’s what I’m talking about.”

I will say that I do think that he embodied some dandyism, which was cool. And I do think, given his career, like he’s in such a hyper masculine career, he can kind of get away with those fashion risks, because he’s 6-foot-3 and giant. And literally the most, like, male-centric career you can have in America, he’s at the highest level of that. And so I love the contrast between somebody like that picking something more feminine, because he could pull it off. He did the same thing with pearls for the [welcome party] too, which is like a more feminine thing to do. But I felt like on him, it looked really masculine. So I feel like the juxtaposition made it land.

A: I love that dress. It was so hard for me not to text it to everyone I know, I was so obsessed with what I put it on. I went to Kleinfeld Bridal Boutique with my mom. And when I went in there, I was like, “OK, I don’t know what I want, but I do know that I want it to be strange and I want it to be big.”

You never get to wear the big dress at any other time in your life, you know? So I knew I wanted to take the opportunity, but I knew I couldn’t wear something too traditional, because I am not a very traditional person and it wouldn’t have reflected my personality. And I feel like, at your wedding, you’re going up there, you’re spilling your heart out. It’s a very vulnerable time. So you want everything to reflect who you are, if you’re going to be heart open the whole night, you know?

At the store, I saw this wall of flowers, and I didn’t realize it was a dress, because it was just a wall of flowers. I asked if it was a dress and they said yes, and I was like, I want to try it. And they were like, “OK, well, we can get you that one but not very many people try that one on because it’s a lot.” And I was like, “Yeah, I think I want a lot. I think that’s on brand for me.” I put it on, and all my friends immediately said that it was the one, it was so me.

A: Kylen always pranks me, and he always surprises me. But every time I try and prank and surprise him, I get caught. I never successfully have done it, actually, like, not even once. So this was my chance. I told him that we were going to have a first look, but it was actually my dad wearing a veil. Him and my dad are super close and they were both dying laughing.

Then we did an actual first look, and when he saw me, he started crying immediately. It was a much bigger reaction than I expected, he was so sweet. And for me, seeing him in his cape, I cried too. I was so overwhelmed because it was so Kylen, and I was so happy that he was expressing himself through his clothes like that. I felt like the cape was like the culmination of all of the growth he’s had in terms of learning to express himself artistically. And I was so excited to see how well it turned out. And he looked so handsome. I loved it.