Unique wedding destination trend: Detroit

For Jackie Wing and Mark Prindiville, their wedding scheduled for Oct. 1, 2016 will be about their love of each other — and Detroit history.

The betrothed met four years ago at Central Michigan University in a History of Michigan class, required for both their majors. The chapters on falling in love came during extracurriculars, including a visit to a Detroit Tigers game at Comerica Park, where Downriver native Prindiville, 25, showed Lansing area-raised Wing, 24, some Motor City landmarks.

On their wedding date, the couple will vow to be husband and wife at an automotive heritage site — the Ford Piquette Avenue Plant where Henry Ford first manufactured the Model T.

“We’re history nerds. We wanted someplace unique,” said Wing, a third-grade teacher in Morenci.

“It’s the antique cars, the creakiness of the floors. The paint on the ceiling is peeling because it’s where cars were made 100 years ago,” said Wing. “Henry Ford’s office is on the second floor, and there are antique cars around because it’s a museum.”

“And the skyline of Detroit is all around us,” said Wing, “and it’s beautiful.”

Forget about the suburban country club or the Caribbean beach civil ceremonies. After Destination Wedding, insert the word Detroit.

More and more couples want to get married in Detroit’s historic churches or hold their receptions in places as unique as the Belle Isle Casino or a turn-of-the-century auto plant. They also want to use the city’s landscape — from the glorious to the gritty — as a backdrop for out-of-the-ordinary photo poses.

Beyond the banquet hall

At the Detroit Yacht Club on Belle Isle, catering director Nikki Charbonneau said the venue is “hard-pressed” to find an open Saturday in 2016.

“They want that Detroit theme. They want cool Detroit areas,” said Charbonneau. “Every bride is saying we’re going for a Detroit theme. They’re not looking for those cookie-cutter banquet halls. They want unique areas with great views of the city.”

“We’re on the comeback and everyone wants to be part of it,” said Charbonneau.

In downtown Detroit, the Colony Club is booked through the year with weddings, and the Gem Theatre is doing twice as many as just three years ago, said Nicole Lakatos, director of sales and marketing for both venues.

“It’s definitely a trend. I’ve been doing this a really long time. It basically used to be more of a sell to get people to come downtown and do a wedding,” said Lakatos. “And now it’s a destination.”

“We have people who are not local anymore. They live in Brooklyn or they live in Ft. Myers, or Chicago. Or one of them grew up here,” said Lakatos. “It’s an opportunity ... and then they showcase Detroit and give everyone a positive experience to talk about.”

“Detroit is a very popular brand,” said Jeanette Pierce, who founded the Detroit booster and tour outfit once known as D:hive and now known as the Detroit Experience Factory. About 50,000 people have gone on its tours, including Richard Peresky, who became Pierce’s husband.

They invited the entire city — via Facebook — to their wedding ceremony in 2011 at Campus Martius. The couple passed out 800 cupcakes from On the Rise Bakery, sponsored by the Capuchin priests to help ex-addicts master a craft. Pierce and Peresky had an invitation-only reception in the atrium of the Compuware Building. Food stations represented Greek, Mexican, Polish, and soul food cuisines, plus an Eastern Market-themed station for vegetarians. The groomsmen wore cuff links with the Tigers’ Old English D and their ties featured map designs of Detroit.

“Maybe more people are attached to Detroit than before,” said Pierce, “and they want to showcase it to their family and friends who think they are crazy for loving it.”

Detroit roots celebrated

It figures that one of the first auto factories that begot the Motor City moniker is now a unique wedding venue within a museum.

The Ford Piquette Avenue Plant, built in 1904 in the Milwaukee Junction neighborhood just east of Detroit’s New Center area, is where Ford Motor built Model T’s before moving to Highland Park. In 1911, Ford sold it to Studebaker, which produced cars there until 1933.

“A large percentage of our couples grew up here and now live out of state,” said Nancy Darga, the Piquette’s executive director. “They want to come back home. They don’t want a banquet hall. They want something that’s rare and evokes Detroit roots.

“We’re the perfect site for that. You can’t tap into the root of Detroit more than the Piquette Plant and Ford,” said Darga. “It’s 111 years old. It’s still in its original state. You’re really getting the spark that launched Detroit — autos and music are the heart and soul of Detroit.”

“It’s rustic. It’s a factory. Photographers love our building. There are the original brick walls. There’s a great patina,” said Darga.

One of Piquette’s most popular features is the Model T. The Piquette has also hosted a wedding in which a couple used an antique car to roll down the aisle. One couple used the space to feature a circus theme. One groom, a golf course owner, brought in golf course sod to mark the bridal aisle.

The Piquette hosts dozens of weddings a year. But the venue does produce challenges. The building doesn’t have central air-conditioning or heating, although units can be leased for events. Caterers bring food to the site.

For the Wing-Prindiville wedding next October, the couple plans to have the ceremony on the Piquette’s second floor, amid antique cars and near Henry Ford’s onetime office. On the third floor, they’ll place dinner tables around classic cars.

“Because it’s a museum, I really don’t have to decorate,” said Jackie Wing. And they’re getting history within their budget. Wing said it will cost them about $4,000 to rent the facility for about 100 guests — and with catering and DJ and other items thrown in, the couple says they believe the reception tab will be about $10,000.

“When we went to check the place out, it was unexpected to see. It was an unfamiliar part of Detroit for me,” said Prindiville, who has a master’s degree in history and is obtaining a second master’s degree at Wayne State University to become an archivist. “But it was instantly someplace that we could see ourselves. I’m a huge fan of Michigan and Detroit history — and oh yeah, this is where the Model T was built!”

When he described the venue to a few relatives they were apprehensive, and one “grew up fearing Detroit a little bit,” said Prindiville. But he showed her the Piquette and now “she’s trying to arrange functions there for her work.”

Pretty as a picture

For her spring 2014 wedding, Martina Ross Umpleby, a General Motors lead corporate auditor, wanted to showcase the neighborhood she grew up in — southwest Detroit. Her husband, Jason Umpleby, an account manager for a digital software firm, grew up in Ann Arbor.

In contrast to the ornate stateliness of iconic Holy Redeemer Catholic Church, her childhood parish where they were married, she wanted her wedding photos to reflect the neighborhood vibe. The couple had photographer Mark Wright pose them in front of a closed fire station marked by graffiti artists.

“Growing up, many of my friends were graffiti artists and I feel like the style is distinctly southwest (Detroit),” she said. “I wanted my new family to understand how and where I grew up. I take a lot of pride in my corner of the city and I wanted to share that along with the highlights of downtown.”

The graffiti shot, she said, represents “one of the things I feel southwest (Detroit) does best.”

Before their July 11 wedding ceremony and reception in the 1920s-designed Colony Club, a onetime women’s club in downtown Detroit, Lila Weinstein and Evan McDowell visited a century-old city landmark for photo-taking. But instead of well-preserved and functioning, this Detroit landmark is a crumbling, worldwide symbol of Detroit’s decay.

The couple, both 22, posed for photos in front of the Michigan Central Station. She’s a trained dancer who grew up in Farmington Hills. He grew up in Hudsonville in western Michigan. They just moved to Dayton, Ohio, where she’ll dance with the Dayton Contemporary Dance Company II, and he’ll work as a 2nd Lt. at Wright Patterson Air Force Base, following his recent graduation from the U.S. Air Force Academy

“It was just a cool contrast. It’s a very grand building even though it’s in disarray,” said Weinstein. “We just took the photos in the field right in front. It was awesome. It has a golden look to it with the field. And it gave us kind of a rustic feel.”

Their photographer, Holly Green, calls it “the Detroit feel.”

“The younger generation is less worried about the bad vibes Detroit has gotten in the past. They’re a little more free about going around Detroit,” said Green. “It’s a cool, hip thing.”

Contact Patricia Montemurri: 313-223-4538, pmontemurri@freepress.com or follow on Twitter @pmontemurri.