Leelanau’s Wedding Season, Take 2
Wedding dates are on hold till fall (or not?), downsized, or pushed to 2021. It’s suddenly a roller coaster for event venues, their proprietors and staff, with ripple effects felt across the local economy. Here’s more on how those in Leelanau’s wedding industry are hanging on, while helping couples rethink their dream day.
The Barn at French Valley Vineyard in Cedar is uniquely positioned to immediately accommodate displaced COVID-19 couples, says Julie Lopata, tasting room manager at the winery, who coordinates weddings in the property’s renovated centennial Amish barn. She explains there is a clean slate for booking all of 2020, because when the previous owners decided to sell French Valley Vineyard late last fall, they funneled any existing events to their other event locations across the peninsula. “We are wide open here,” she says, adding that in particular French Valley would like to assist couples this summer who missed their weddings this spring due to COVID-19 and will work with them for pricing accordingly.
Sherri Campbell Fenton, proprietor at Black Star Farms in Suttons Bay says, “Elopements are up. We have seen an uptick in our elopement packages, where couples can get married and enjoy the property for a couple of hours, and we give them a bottle of bubbly and a cheese board to celebrate.”
She says that with most of the large ticketed summer dining events usually held at the Black Star Farms estate on hold now, the staff is rethinking how to do events in general — and that dovetails seamlessly into small weddings. The catering team at the Inn at Black Star Farms is now offering small private wine dinners (for 2-12 people) for any special celebrations (micro-weddings included). “These are a way to experience something elevated in a very safe environment and create positive memories this summer with family or close friends,” Campbell Fenton says. “Definitely, this could be paired with an elopement — and we have done this already.”
She adds going ultra-small for on-site celebrations means guests are able to spread out from each other. “Over the 160-acre winery we have several exquisite backdrops where we can set up a small table,” she says. “We’ve had to get creative, and I think some of these ideas will live on past this year.”
The Homestead in Glen Arbor just hosted its first wedding last Friday since the shutdown. “The couple, from Chicago, held out hope until the very end they could still be married this year and go on with their life together,” says Tony Farragh, senior manager & director of sales. “It was smooth sailing.” He adds that the team made the environment feel welcoming and not sterile, though technically speaking it was.
He says food and beverage decisions became one of the biggest shifts. “For example, a trend at weddings has been big beautiful charcuterie boards—these are now prepped individually.” He tells the Leelanau Ticker while there is no streamlined way to explain all the new protocols in place at The Homestead's weddings — it’s a 30 page manual — “we have been proactive in communicating that this is a mutual responsibility with staff, and the couple and their guests...that we not let this virus hit home.” He adds, “Some couples are reaching out who may have postponed to late August, or fall, and we are restarting the conversations as far as what is the smart route to go. Uninviting guests is not easy to do.”
Like Farragh, the Leland Lodge’s Manager of Events and Weddings Kyra Andre is working closely with couples to evolve their wedding details to adhere to COVID-19 restrictions and guidelines, including downsizing. “Our first wedding this summer is on July 18 — now 58 people when it was originally planned to be 150. I am admiring the couples who are choosing to stick with their original date…they are having to adjust so much and make many calls to family and friends.” She says working in their favor: the lodge has multiple event spaces — including an outdoor garden patio — to help fit their new vision.
And an absence of outdoor space is a limiting factor for Mimi Heberlein, co-owner at Willowbrook Mill, a historic venue in downtown Northport. “With proper social distancing we can have 50 people, and that includes the people who work the event,” she says. The venue has hosted one 30-person wedding, and another small-scale wedding is on the books for August.
The rest? Postponed.
“We had a solidly booked 2020, and only a couple of the weddings could or wanted to downsize,” she says. While the venue (and others across the county in the same boat) will be able to keep the non-refundable deposits from this year for weddings postponed for next, “we won’t have new deposits coming in 2021 or the remaining 2020 revenue for our opening operating budget for fiscal year 2021,” says Heberlein. “It hurts financially for sure, but we are part of a community and want to see everyone stay healthy.” In the meantime, “we are trying tiny new experiences at the Willowbrook Mill.” For example, a couple at their summer home in Northport is renting the venue — and its reliable internet connection — for work projects this week, and a local photographer will use the space for photo shoots.
Carly Campbell, who owns Forget-Me-Not Florist in Suttons Bay, says she has experienced unexpected new wedding business — from elopements to couples booking with a mere month's notice to an influx of nervous 2021 clients wanting to make sure their date is locked in.
“There are no rules,” she says, “and it is utterly chaotic. But also positive. I have hired two new employees — another designer and an administrative person — and I have an interview with a young woman from Leland today to help us this summer. I feel like while what’s on our plate is on our plate because of COVID, I do believe this little flower shop is growing.”
And Empire-based wedding photographer Mae Stier, whose bookings are mostly pushed to 2021, is seeing a trend evolve in her conversations with clients. “As I begin to talk with potential clients for 2021, it seems as though many of them are already formulating plans A, B, and C, in the event that they have to downsize next year, and this type of planning definitely results in a reprioritizing of what the event as a whole will look like. I think we will see a shift this year and moving forward towards smaller weddings.”
Heberlein echoes Stier’s sentiment. “As far as reinventing goes, it is the couples, not the industry that are the ones doing that. Now what they want is authenticity, being with the people that are their nearest and dearest only, and that means smaller weddings. A few years ago the national average for a wedding was 150 people. Now it’s 130, and with COVID, I think it will be coming down even farther. People will make it an intimate, controlled environment, with the goal to bring together the people you love.”
She continues, “Destination weddings are the way of weeding out extraneous guests, and that is good news for Northern Michigan. Couples are saying, ‘I want you here, I want you to come.’ Come for the wedding but stay for the week.”
Photos: The Barn at French Valley Vineyard in Cedar; new private dinners at Black Star Farms in Suttons Bay.