Maple City Wedding Venue Bankruptcy Spells Trouble For Local Brides And Grooms

A Leelanau County wedding venue and glamping destination has closed its doors and declared bankruptcy, leaving several brides and grooms-to-be out thousands of dollars and without a place to get married this summer.

The Leelanau Ticker reported last July that the property and event center known as “Nature” had hit the market for an asking price of $2,950,000. Located at 2988 W Burdickville Road near Maple City, Nature opened in 2018 with a plan to utilize its 80 acres for weddings, family reunions, corporate retreats, and other large events. In addition to event space, Nature also touted itself as a large-scale glamping destination.

When the property hit the market last year, owner Bryan Cloninger said he had only activated one of five possible revenue streams: hosting weddings and receptions. Other opportunities, he said – including serving alcohol, business and corporate retreats, wellness services and merchandise, and food and catering – would ideally be unlocked with the help of the right partner, investor, or new owner.

The right buyer never came along: Last week, Cloninger sent an email to brides and grooms that had booked Nature for the 2024 wedding season, informing them of the “regrettable and difficult news” that his company – Nature, LLC – had declared bankruptcy and gone out of business.

“The long and short of it, as it affects you, is that everyone who has booked a date for an event at Nature in the future is likely to experience some form of loss or negative impact as a result of this business failure,” Cloninger wrote in the email. “Of all the many consequences to me and others, the effect on clients is my single deepest regret. Neither I personally nor the now-defunct company possess any funds or other resources after bankruptcy to make things right or otherwise offer amends. I would like to acknowledge the depth of the impact I am sure this will have on you, especially as this is likely to otherwise be such a joyful time.”

Cloninger’s letter goes on to explain that his company “is no longer able to conduct business” in any fashion, and that the operation failed due to in part to “the business operating obstacles and difficulties that are unique to the COVID period and to the these uncertain post-COVID times.”

The news is a cannonball for Katie Bush and Andrew Reid, one of four couples who were set to get married at Nature this year. Bush and Reid had planned a June wedding at the venue, with 200 invitees on their guest list.

According to Bush, who works as a registered nurse at Munson Medical Center, the couple was drawn to Nature because of its sprawling property and unique glamping component.

“One of the big selling points for us was that they offered glamping for the entire weekend,” Bush said. “It had been a while since all of our friends had been together in one place – mostly because of COVID – and we loved the idea of being able to camp with all of our friends for the weekend and have everybody together.”

Beyond losing their venue, the couple had already paid in full for the use of the property. Reid tells the Leelanau Ticker that he and Bush put down an initial $7,000 deposit when they booked with Cloninger last April, followed by another $3,000 in September.

“As a result, we’re about 100 days out from our planned wedding, we have all our vendors lined up and all the planning is pretty much done, but now we’ve lost our venue and lost the entire $10,000 deposit we paid for the venue,” Bush says.

Since getting the news, the pair have been busily touring other northern Michigan wedding venues, in hopes of finding an opening on their chosen date in June. They’ve also filed a claim for their losses with the bankruptcy court, and even consulted a lawyer about their chances of getting their deposit back. “Unfortunately, the lawyer said that we’d be extremely lucky to get one cent on the dollar back,” Reid says.

These types of losses are not exactly uncommon in the wedding industry, especially in the wake of the pandemic. In 2020, a national wedding event chain called Noah’s Event Venue closed after filing for bankruptcy protection, shuttering 42 venues in 25 states and derailing wedding plans for thousands of brides and grooms. According to CBS News, the bankruptcy left those couples out a combined $7 million. Even despite these risks, studies show that only about half of couples invest in wedding insurance to protect against these types of losses.

For his part, Cloninger tells The Ticker he is “extremely regretful for what's going on with these brides and grooms,” and that he “fought all the way up to the last hour to fulfill what I told these people they could do at my business.”

Specifically, Cloninger explains that there were two offers on the table for the Nature property when the matter went before the bankruptcy court. The first was a cash offer from a buyer who intended to discontinue weddings and events at Nature and convert the property to a private use. The second was a financed deal that would have kept Nature operating as an event center.

“I argued it to the court,” Clonginer says. “I said, ‘Look, I have a credit buyer, they’re going to pay more than the cash deal, and they’re going to fulfill all my contracts.’ And the judge overruled me and took the cash deal.”

Similarly, Cloninger says he had a conversation with an eleventh-hour bidder last Thursday – just hours before the bankruptcy court deal was set to close – who would have bought the property in cash, paid a higher amount than the original cash buyer, and honored Nature’s event agreements.

“I ran it up the flagpole, and the court still said no,” he says. “They told me it was too late.”

As they work to salvage their wedding plans, Bush and Reid say they are trying to stay positive.

“At the end of the day, we still get to get married,” Bush says. “That’s been our motto through all of this. Our wedding weekend is just going to be different than what we wanted.”