Bride turns on waterworks

One can only hope a wedding reception in Streamwood Saturday unfolded like a dream -- before the wedding night that followed became a nightmare.

Looking for a place to hang her wedding dress hours after the ceremony at about 1 a.m. Sunday, a bride staying at the Hilton Garden Inn in Hoffman Estates made the mistake of choosing the sprinkler head in her room.

In doing so, she broke the tiny glass vial meant to activate the sprinkler when it's shattered by the heat of a fire.

The smelly, stagnant water of the sprinkler system emerged with enough pressure to put out a fire -- had there been one.

The unidentified bride had just come from her reception at The Seville, just down Barrington Road in Streamwood, and was inebriated enough to require help back to her room, hotel General Manager David Steiner said.

Most rooms have a sign warning against hanging anything from the ceiling sprinkler, but this one did not because it was a handicapped accessible room. The wedding party had requested it to provide extra space for the bridesmaids to prepare.

"Maybe with a wedding dress and a long veil, she was looking for something higher to hang it from," Hoffman Estates Deputy Fire Chief John Mayer speculated. "She definitely won't forget her wedding, though."

The water immediately flooded the wedding couple's fourth-floor room and an adjacent one. The torrent then soaked through the floors and down the elevator shaft in the corridor.

Six rooms were affected -- two each on the fourth, third and second floors -- before the water reached the lobby.

The sprinkler activation prompted the fire alarms to go off, which in turn led to the evacuation of the entire 184-room hotel, where seven weddings had booked rooms for the evening.

The bride and groom took off and hadn't been heard from by Monday afternoon.

"I'm pretty sure it scared the heck out of her," Steiner said. "We didn't get the opportunity to speak to them yet."

A damage estimate wasn't yet available Monday, but Steiner said restoration crews had arrived by 6 a.m. Sunday to examine and replace everything damaged by the water.

Five of the six affected rooms could be ready again by late Wednesday, Steiner said.