First Congregational Church — Attraction in Detroit

We had our wedding at First Congregational Church of Detroit in July 2016. Mainly we worked with Pastor Cindy and two staff members to plan the wedding and the weeks and months before it happened.

Bottom line, we recommend against First Congregational Church of Detroit as a wedding venue.

Please note: this is NOT a review of the church itself. The Underground Railroad Tour is awesome! And the church community was always welcoming and kind to us. This is just a review of the church as a venue/caterer for weddings.

Pros: The building is beautiful, both the sanctuary itself as well as the rooms used for the bridal party and reception. The dining area looked great with napkins decorated in our wedding colors. And, for what the church promises, it’s a good bargain in terms of price.

Unfortunately, the church did not deliver on their promises.

We had the misfortune of having our wedding on one of the hottest days of the year. The reception hall itself has air conditioning units, and the church staff assured us that our reception would be safe from the heat. Not so. We had an afternoon reception, and it was a sweltering 85 to 90 degrees. The air conditioning was on, but it was apparently not at all up to the task of cooling a room with 140 people. Our guests were quite uncomfortable with the heat.

This created a significant problem when the church caterer did not have any water available for guests at the start of our reception. Our guests graciously listened to our speeches, and even dry toasts by our parents, without any water or wine on our tables. Members of our bridal party specifically asked that pitchers of water be brought out for our guests as the reception got started around 1pm. But the church was slow to address this issue, and it was over an hour into the reception before all our sweltering guests had water to drink at their tables. This happened despite the fact that we discussed ahead of time with the church that drinks be at the tables when our guests arrived in the reception hall. Many of our guests left earlier than they would have due to the heat and lack of water.

We paid for appetizers as part of the church catering. We discussed ahead of time with our church contacts that the appetizers be available at noon (around when the ceremony ended). At the end of the ceremony (~noon), we told our guests they could file into the reception hall for some snacks, but there were none when they arrived, creating some confusion. The catering staff put out the appetizers around 12:45pm, only a few minutes before we asked everyone to take their seats to start the reception. The church catering staff even covered up the appetizers with plastic wrap and took it out of the reception early, with most of it left uneaten.

These were our biggest concerns, but there were quite of few other problems.

Throughout the wedding planning process, Pastor Cindy and the staff all assured us that they have extensive experience with weddings, and that they were prepared to pull it off.

We want to emphasize that the community at First Congregational Church of Detroit was kind and welcoming to us, but we are not able to recommend them...

I've lived in Detroit until I was 18 years old and had no idea that there was an underground railroad. To my surprise we were set up for a tour by my cousin and it was wonderful. There's a movie presentation prior to the tour. It's very informative it lets you step back into time and see what the humans had to deal with during slavery. This is something we cannot sweep under the rug it happen own it.

The actors and actresses were wonderful walking you through time during the 18th century. I was so amazing awestruck. And after the tour we went to the sanctionary it is so beautiful it took my breath away. It actually moved me to tears. The first congressional Church is a must see.

I highly recommend whenever and wherever you can do a donation for the church and or the exhibit do so. This is a piece of history that should never ever go away. I will be back on another vacation and I will visit it again.

The only reason we were 2 hours late starting the tour was because the bus is bringing school children and got caught in the fog in the morning and early afternoon and they...

Take the living history Underground Railroad tour!!! Cannot recommend this highly enough. I called to reserve a tour and spoke to Janet. She was so nice and even let the tour happen even though we didn't have the full 10 participants needed. The actors are all volunteers and they do an amazing job. You become a slave and its completely set up with scenery and houses that are your "stops" along your journey to freedom. You have a guide that stays in character to take you to each stop and teaches you about what really happened while on the journey. Seriously, this is absolutely worth the ticket!! It takes about 45 minutes from the beginning to end. You'll show up 30 minutes before to handle paying for it, etc. Great place to take...