Port 393 | Luxury Weddings & Events in Holland MI — Local services in Holland

We got married at Port 393 in June of 2024. While our wedding day itself was beautiful and the Cove House space especially was wonderful, working with this venue in the lead-up was an incredibly stressful and disappointing experience.

From the very beginning, the team was rigid, inflexible, and difficult to work with. They didn’t convey any sense that they understood how important this day was to us. Instead, it often felt like we were burdening them with our wedding. Every interaction seemed to drain the joy out of the planning process, and they were the only vendor that consistently made things harder, not easier. Communication was frustrating; emails contained numerous misspellings and were confusing, which didn’t inspire confidence when we were trying to navigate their already dense and harsh contract language. I constantly felt like I was walking on eggshells, and was scared of violating some contract clause. The stress of having to scour the contract before every conversation was exhausting and took away from what should have been an exciting time.

One recurring and unprofessional theme was their repeated justification of inflexible policies or surprise costs by saying how much money they’ve invested in the venue without passing it on to clients. The reality is: we’re paying for a service, and that’s fine—we expect that. But to imply that they’re somehow doing clients a favor while also raising bar prices twice between contract signing and the wedding, increasing rental fees, and reducing event space time in exchange for Cove House usage (which they framed as “included”) was difficult to swallow.

One specific issue on the day of our wedding was alcohol in the cove house. We ordered a set # of beers for the groomsmen, and they finished those. The groomsmen asked Port 393 staff if they could order more through Port, and they said no, but the Port staff (maybe someone was new) specifically told them that they could go to the gas station and bring back beers to drink in the parking lot. The groomsmen knew this had previously been against the policy, because I had endlessly communicated that all alcohol brought onto the property would be fined $250 per occurrence (which is fair enough). Since Port staff specifically okayed this though, they brought beers into the parking lot, and then were later told off by the same staff and had to dump out all the beer. It was extremely confusing to hear about the next day. Luckily, we weren't fined for this, but again it was just a stressful thing to deal with.

It’s a shame, because the venue itself is great and our wedding day did turn out amazing. But if I could go back, I’d seriously reconsider whether the added stress and poor client experience was worth it. The planning process should be joyful, and unfortunately, this venue made that part much harder than it...

WOW ✨

I don’t even know where to start and could never put into words how absolutely perfect our wedding was and how amazing Port 393 is.

We got married on March 18, 2023 and I am still reminiscing on the best day of our lives! We booked Port 393 as our venue 2 years prior to our actual wedding day. At the time we were living in Indiana due to me still being in graduate school. Even with us being so far away, Port made the planning process so easy and was always there for us answering each one of my many many questions!

We ran into issues with a previous planner not affiliated with Port in which we were put in a position to find a different coordinator. We turned to Port as they offer an in house coordination service. It was a stressful process and we ran into some detours along the way, however Candice stood by me every step of the way even personally calling me and giving me her personal number so she could do whatever she needed to put my heart and mind at ease. We were thankfully blessed with Alison as our final coordinator and it was an absolute BLESSING! Alison was a rockstar, so positive, helpful and kind. She answered every question I had and was the only reason I was able to relax and enjoy every second of my wedding day. She handled literally EVERYTHING from dealing with catering, desserts and the transportation we hired. She was a god send, and we are forever grateful to have had her. We even had our vendors commenting on how amazing of a coordinator she was, and how great she was with the staff.

We ended up of course having a blizzard that day, but it made for such unique photos and the staff never skipped a beat. They even allowed my sweet boy to snap some pictures with us due to the weather!

I would recommend Port 393 again and again. Candice and Brian even stopped by our wedding to make sure everything went smoothly and we were having such a great night because of the tough year we had had leading up to our wedding. I truly felt like they shared the same importance for my wedding day that I did and they helped to create the wedding of my dreams.

THANK YOU Port 393 for your kindness, professionalism and straight up love. You care about your couples and...

I don't even know where to begin. This will be long, but as a bride, I think it is so important to have this information when choosing a venue for your big day. I am absolutely filled with gratitude for Port 393 and the incredible staff there.

My husband and I had a very non-traditional wedding; we had a small ceremony and were married in June 2020 at Port 393. We had booked with the venue before they hade even started construction, which felt like a risk, but after a single conversation with Candice, we knew we were in good hands, and Port 393 far exceeded any of our expectations. Our ceremony was absolutely perfect, even with all the crazy challenges of the pandemic thrown our way.

Later, we decided to have a reception and new we would love nothing more than to return to Port 393, so in February 2022 we celebrated our marriage with a reception at Port 393 again! We didn't think we could have any better of an experience than we already did for our ceremony, but boy were we blown away (again!) by everything about this venue and staff. The venue itself was beautiful with minimal effort in decorations, and the staff were so accommodating, kind, thoughtful, and responsive throughout the entire process.

We had the absolute pleasure of working with Bekkah as our Venue Manager. Short story: she is an incredible person and wonderful at what she does. She was so responsive and flexible with us while planning our day. She was so helpful with making every vision we had for our day come to life. It is abundantly clear that she cares deeply about what she does and is so personable. Not only was she an excellent venue manager, but I feel as though I have gained a new friend through working with her.

If you are considering having a wedding at Port 393, I don't think you will be disappointed with...