Marshall, MI

For those of you who are coming from out of town, John and I thought we'd share some information about my hometown of Marshall, MI. It really is a beautiful town and a great place to grow up. We're excited to have our wedding there. Just in case there is a pause in wedding festivities, here are some things you can see in Marshall.

The first picture is the most recognizable landmark in Marshall, the Brooks Memorial Fountain. It's basically the center of town, set in a small park in the middle of a round-about. It is designed after Marie Antoinette's "Temple of Love" in Versailles France. It will be a beautiful place to take wedding pictures, but it's also I nice place to grab an ice cream cone from downtown and relax on the park benches. At night, the fountain changes color and my sister and I used to run around the circle and have races cued by the colors.

The next picture is of Marshall's most famous restaurant, Schuler's. There is an English style pub on one side of the restaurant and a restaurant on the other side. The restaurant used to really big deal back in it's hay day, but now it's more of a local flavor. It's still a really nice place with a unique charm and good food. We are having our rehearsal dinner here. It's a few blocks away from the church, so it should be a nice walk through downtown Marshall from the church to the restaurant.










The next picture is of the National House Inn which is a historic inn next to the fountain circle. We will be posting hotel information later this week, but if you want the true historic Marshall experience, you could always stay here!

Marshall is a historic town with many beautiful old houses and an old fashioned downtown district. It's fun to drive down mansion street and see some of the old homes and walk down main street to visit the shops. Marshall was almost the capital of Michigan, so you can also spend some time visiting historical museums like the governor's "mansion" (it's not that big!), the civil war museum, the one room school house, and so on. The best time to do these things is during "Home Tour" when people dress up and give tours, but I think you can go at anytime. We mostly went to these places as school field trips, so it's been a long time!


South of town, there is a park called Ketchum Park, which would be a fun place for the kids to play. Apparently they have a new playground too! We just used to play with rocks by the river in the park and swing on the swings. Looks like they're sprucing the place up a bit.

There is also a new boardwalk along the Kalamazoo River which is a nice walk. My mom's dogs love it! :)




For food, you have to get a doughnut or a cookie from Louie's Bakery. Any person born and raised in Marshall has been ruined for life when it comes to doughnuts because nothing compares to Louie's. We always have nutrolls with breakfast on Christmas morning and their pumpkin cookies (shaped like pumpkins, not made of pumpkins) are my favorite sugar cookies of all time. You should definitely stop by for a treat. Another fun thing to do is to go to the Highlight Drive-In for milkshakes and other fried treats. I haven't been there in a long time, but they used to have 100 milkshake flavors...the last one I had was Pepsi flavored. We have a couple of good sandwich places. Our Mancinos is the best Mancinos I've had and one of our family friends just started a shop called "Pastrami Joe's." Both are excellent sub shops. The Dark Horse bar has fantastic pizza too. There are a lot of good local places!

You can check out this webpage for more information about the town. We hope you have fun here!

http://www.marshallmi.org/