Stephani and David Yates
took center stage
at their wedding.
Stephani Miller and David Yates
exchanged vows on the Detroit Opera House stage.
HARRY KIRS BAUM
Staff Writer
0
ne expects to wait in line for
a table at Detroit's famous
Lafayette Coney Island at
two in the morning. One
does not expect to hear the sound of
diners applauding, tinkling glasses and
urging a formally attired bride and
groom to kiss.
Earlier, in a ceremony at another,
more formal Detroit landmark,
Stephani Miller wed David Yates —
on stage at the Detroit Opera House.
With the chuppah set in front of
the curtain, 300 guests sat in atten-
dance as Rabbis M. Robert Syme
and Harold Loss and Cantor Harold
Orbach of Temple Israel wed the
couple in the first Jewish wedding at
the opera house. When the groom
broke the glass, the curtain was
raised to show rose-bedecked tables
and the band Mel Ball and Colors on
stage.
"It was like a dream," said Kaye
Miller, Stephani's mother, who with
husband Stan and the groom's parents,
Harvey and Phyllis Yates, began plan-
ning the Fourth of July wedding a
year ago.
Guests dined on almond chicken
and rice pilaf for dinner and cherry
cobbler for dessert.
Afterward, the groom sang to his
bride the song "You Are My Every-
thing" by the rock band R.E.M.
"It was the highlight of the wed-
ding," Stephani said.
Stephani, raised in Farmington
Hills, is an events planner at the opera
house and thought that a wedding on
stage would be "beautiful and tradi-
tional." David, from Birmingham, is
an attorney at Landau, Omahana &
Kopka in Southfield.
The groom met his bride at a
cousin's wedding six years ago at the
Ritz-Carlton over Memorial Day
weekend. He proposed last year on
the Fourth of July weekend in Vail,
Colo.
"He asked me on a park bench
under the stars after a romantic dinner
in Vail Village," Stephani said.
The couple spent a two-week hon-
eymoon on the French Riviera and in
northern Italy. They plan to settle in
Bloomfield Hills. ❑