Choosing our venue

Choosing a venue turned out to be harder than I had expected.  Before we got engaged, I had visions of getting married at Greenfield Village, where my parents were married 34 years ago.  Aside from the obvious sentimental value, Greenfield Village offered exactly what I wanted - a church-like setting without requiring a religious ceremony.  The chapel is quaint:

Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/sjb4photos/2843771435/

and the options for the reception (in the neighboring Henry Ford Museum) are gorgeous:

Source: blog.thehenryford.org

Unfortunately, the chapel only holds 125 people (we were staring down a guest list of over 250) and the reception packages were well over budget.

Once I cast that idea aside, we started to search for more practical options.  Our criteria included: space for at least 200 people, a location where we could host both our ceremony (preferably indoors) as well as our reception, and (of course) packages that wouldn't blow our entire budget on venue alone.

Surprisingly, finding a venue that met the above criteria was a bit of a challenge!  Country clubs originally appealed to me, but most did not offer a viable indoor ceremony option.  Seemingly people tend to think that if you're not getting married in a church, it must be because you want to get married outside, but we knew from the beginning that we were much too risk-averse to consider an outdoor ceremony (side note - it's a good thing too, as the high on our wedding day ended up being only 42 degrees!).  

In the end, we decided to go with a hotel.  The Sheraton Detroit-Novi offered a large ballroom, a portion of which could be sectioned off for the ceremony, and an "assembly" area outside the ballroom that could be used for cocktail hour in between the ceremony and the reception.  Although I wasn't able to find many reviews online, the ones I did find were extremely positive.  The idea that our guests could just stumble upstairs at the end of the night was appealing as well. 

Even given all of the above though, what really sold us on the Sheraton was their awesome sales coordinator, Michelle.  From our first meeting she was incredibly friendly and willing to work with us to customize our wedding, giving us total confidence in her and her team.  Because Michelle was such a big reason why we chose the Sheraton, you can imagine my distress when, in November, I learned that she'd left suddenly for another job.  I was completely crest-fallen, and there may or may not have been a quasi bridezilla-esque meltdown.  

In the end though, it all worked out, and her replacement Danielle was just as great, but let this be a lesson to other brides - engagements are long, and you never know what might happen over the course of many months!  Although it's so hard to do in the heat of the moment (and so cliche, I know), just remember:

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keep_Calm_and_Carry_On