Michael Newell desired to purchase, remodel, and repurpose the home where he and his siblings grew up. There are wedding bells ringing!
For many years, a thought often crept into Michael Newell’s mind: “What if I bought my childhood home?” He wanted to keep the cherished house, but give it another purpose. Sometimes he shared that thought with his then-girlfriend, Marché Robinson. But it never went further than that.
That childhood home — a 7,000-square-foot colonial-style house located on a 16-acre lot just south of Greensboro, N.C. — was built by Mr. Newell’s parents in the early 1980s, and Mr. Newell has only the fondest memories of growing up there with his parents and five older siblings. The home was filled with joy, happiness and love, he said.
“Whether it was full of family members — even when it was just me and my mom and my dad — we always had a good time in the house,” he said.
Mr. Newell and Ms. Robinson got engaged in 2018, and when they started searching for a place to get married, Mr. Newell, 38, a lawyer and a restaurateur, started thinking about the family home once again. But with his career on the rise, and without quite knowing the logistics of converting a family home into a commercial wedding venue, he left the idea alone. It wasn’t until after he and Ms. Robinson got married in 2019, at a historic home that was being used for weddings, that he decided to make his own dream come true.
Ms. Robinson, 37, a lawyer and lifestyle influencer, remarked, “Our venue led him to bring it up again.”
Mr. Newell reasoned that purchasing the home and revitalising it would keep it in the family and provide the family with an additional revenue source. In addition, he realised how limited the diversity was in the wedding industry.
Mr. Newell remarked that the landscape of the wedding industry is quite homogeneous. “There are few African Americans who own venues. I don’t personally know any, and I wondered, “Why not us?” Why not this location? Why would we not?'”
The wedding industry in the United States is a $100 billion industry, and couples spend the majority of their spending on venues, according to The Knot, a firm that studies wedding trends and offers an online marketplace to help people plan nuptials.
According to The Knot’s 2021 Real Weddings Study, couples spent an average of $10,700 on a venue. In North Carolina, the average cost of a wedding ceremony and location was $23,000.
