GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Morenas, a new modern luxury event space, is making a change to its grand opening weekend. The venue will now host a wedding for a Grand Rapids couple whose Florida wedding was cancelled due to Hurricane Ian.
Lauren Scott and Kingsley Amlalo became engaged on New Year’s Eve in 2021. Scott always knew that she wanted to get married on October 1. “October is my favorite month,” she told FOX 17. “So I figured, why not start it off with a bang by getting married?”
One factor that led to the decision to have their wedding outside of Grand Rapids was the death of Scott’s grandmother, who she described as her family’s matriarch. “Once she passed away, it kind of put a damper on the whole engagement for me,” said Scott. “And so I felt like, well, maybe if we make it a destination wedding and make it more fun, you know, in someplace warmer and that kind of thing, it would put some light back into the situation.”
Scott and Amlabo planned to have a sand beach wedding ceremony in Jacksonville Beach, Florida, with a small reception at a restaurant on the beach. They were expecting about 40 guests to attend the ceremony.
Scott said that she was already having a bad day on Monday, due to her grandmother’s house being sold. That afternoon, she turned on the news and saw coverage on Hurricane Ian. The more she watched, the more she realized that her Florida wedding was not going to happen. “So it was devastating, we had to reach out to everyone, we had to have them cancel flights and cancel hotel reservations, and we had absolutely no clue as to what we were gonna do," said Scott.
When they tried to reschedule their wedding in Florida, the couple learned that the only available day would be next Friday, or they would have to wait until next summer. However, they decided that they did not want to wait another year to get married.
Scott and Amlabo then began to plan their wedding in Grand Rapids. One of the venues they sent an inquiry to was Morenas. Scott later received a phone call from Morenas owner Britney Hoskins. “And [Hoskins is] like, you know, ‘are you really looking for a venue this Saturday?’” said Scott. “It sounds real crazy, you know, to start planning a wedding on a Tuesday afternoon, and it’s [on] Saturday.”
Morenas previously had a Grand Opening Gala planned for October 1st. However, after hearing Scott’s story, Hoskins offered to cancel the gala so that the couple could have their wedding their instead.
When Scott went to look at Morenas, she described it as something out of a fairy tale. Scott’s mother and aunts told her that the money from her grandmother’s house would be used to pay for the venue. “I just went from like devastation to like being ecstatic, in like, I feel like 60 seconds,” Scott said.
“My grand opening was extremely important to me but being able to give someone hope and light in what feels like a dark situation was even more important,” said Hoskins. “Doing this represents what we stand for. Which is to be a community solution for life’s most memorable moments.”
“I always say that there are good people in the world still,” said Scott. “I know a lot of dark things happen, but there are still people in the world who just genuinely care about other people and want to help other people.”
