The Dexter Leader
A Heritage Newspaper
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Gordon Hall site of first wedding in generations
By Sean Dalton, Staff Writer
PUBLISHED: June 26, 2008
No one's really certain when Gordon Hall last was the venue for a wedding, but records indicate the first shots of the Civil War had been fired just two months earlier.
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The marriage of Judge Samuel Dexter's fifth child, Julia Gordon Dexter, to Henry Dennison Stannard in June 1861 was the last marriage recorded at the historic mansion.
Vows will be exchanged once more at Gordon Hall on Saturday when Abigail Craft, 23, and Eric Ehn, 24, stand beneath the ivory pillars on the newly renovated porch deck, in front of hundreds of friends, family and guests amid the view of the Webster Township landmark's verdant fields.
It's a dream come true for Craft, who says she is a Dexter girl through and through.
This village has not only been her home but it will forever be the setting where she met the man who agreed to spend the rest of his life together with her.
"Eric was in my mom's (Debora Marsh's) English class," she recalled. He was a Dexter High School senior at the time, and Marsh was bitten by the matchmaker bug.
"She decided I needed to date him and introduced us in class."
It started out like most of the strongest and longest-lasting relationships - awkwardly.
"My mom was saying, 'I'm so excited,' and we both said, 'Hi, it's nice to meet you,'" Craft recalled.
But things went well and Craft asked Ehn to the homecoming football game, which was right about the time the pair realized that they had found something special in one another.
Since graduating in 2002 and 2003, respectively, they have lived their lives together, whether that meant living in Dexter or elsewhere. Ehn is in the U.S. Air Force and Craft has been pursuing a college education.
"Eric went to the Air Force Academy in Colorado and I finished school at University of Colorado," Craft said.
She admits that being apart from her family in Dexter was a personal hardship, and one that strained the relationship.
"I was really upset about it," Craft said.
In fact, the couple came to a turning point while traveling for Easter on April 16, 2006.
They underwent an uncomfortable discussion in their car, and when Eric asked Abigail what he could do to make her happy, she asked him marry her.
That was the first of the couple's "two engagements."
Ehn agreed to get hitched, but wasn't truly satisfied about being beaten to the punch.
So on July 4 last year, with ring in hand Ehn asked Craft if she would be his wife, amid fireworks both literal and figurative.
"We were at a Tigers game when he asked me," she said.
Soon the question of where to have the wedding came up, and since both of them were from Dexter and they both wanted a "Dexter wedding," the list of choices was narrowed down to such an extent that the answer became obvious.
"Gordon Hall ... I wanted to live in that house when I was little," Craft recalls of one of her childhood ambitions.
Befitting the house's architecture, it will be a Southern plantation-style wedding with more than 200 in attendance. There will be a tent in the back yard for the reception and the ceremony itself will take place on the porch.
Dexter is coming out in show of support of the first Gordon Hall wedding on the books in almost a century and a half.
Dexter Pub will host the rehearsal dinner; Lighthouse CafÈ will cater the wedding dinner; Dexter Area Historical Society member Tammy Wonnacott is making the wedding cake; Sandy Boswick is handling the flowers; and Dexter High School graduates from the Dexter Orchestra will play in a string quartet for the wedding.
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