Haunted house fans get married in, well, a haunted house in Inver Grove Heights

It all started more than 18 years ago, when Tiffany Decker and Jed Schuett first met while working on a production of the show “Office Hours” put on by the Manitowoc, Wis.-based theater company, The Masquers.

“I was stage managing the show that (Schuett) was in, and the director kept saying, ‘Hey, are you coming to the cast party?’ and kept saying, ‘Oh yeah, Jed is gonna be there,’ and kept pushing me to go to the cast parties. Then (Schuett’s) glorious pickup line was, ‘Hey, can you make me some curtains?’ because I know how to sew,” Decker said.

After Schuett and Decker started dating, they began going to haunted houses across the state and country as a way to travel more and support local theater communities. Schuett estimates the couple, who live in Excelsior, spend a few thousand dollars each Halloween season going to haunted houses in the area.

A few weeks ago on Oct. 12, and the couple fittingly got married at Nowhere Entertainment, an amusement center complete with an arcade, escape rooms, mini golf and — of course, — a haunted house, in Inver Grove Heights.

Home haunters

Nicole Ross, one of the owners of Nowhere Entertainment, said her family used to elaborately decorate their house for Halloween to the point that they were called “home haunters.” After Ross and her husband Galen McKay met fellow Halloween lovers Ian Knutson and Mike Reimer, the four of them decided to open Nowhere in 2022 as a family-friendly entertainment center in the east metro.

The idea for this unconventional wedding originated last fall when Schuett and Decker were going through the haunted house and proposed the thought of getting married there as a nod to their love of the spooky season. Ross said while Nowhere can now host events like birthday parties or graduation celebrations, they had never held a wedding at their venue before.

“We’re a fairly new business when it comes to doing all of this because we just opened that part of our business last year, but no, we haven’t done a wedding,” Ross said.

Schuett said they had asked several area haunted houses about the possibility of holding their wedding there, but Nowhere was “definitely the most enthused about it.” Decker added that they have been fans of the venue since its inception.

“Their actors are incredible. Their attention to detail in the different spaces in their haunts are amazing. In the few years, we’ve seen how they’ve grown and built the detail in their haunt, it’s just been incredible,” Decker said.

Traditional attire

The wedding took place in the main entrance of the building with about 75 guests present in traditional attire, a stark contrast to the haunted décor and characters around them. One of the scare actors walked Decker down the aisle to Nowhere’s pirate ship installation, where the officiant, dressed up in pirate gear, began the ceremony.

Other scare actors also interacted with the couple and the guests throughout the wedding, and another highlight of the day was the receiving line to congratulate the couple was in the center’s haunted house.

Afterward, the wedding moved to the Dellwood Country Club for a “spooky elegant” reception that felt like, as Decker put it, as if a 1950s ballroom was set up for dinner and then not touched for a few decades.

To keep their love of Halloween tied into their post-wedding plans, Schuett and Decker road-tripped to Washington, D.C., hitting several haunted locations along the way, including ones in Chicago, Salem, Mass., and Camp Crystal Lake in N.J., where the cult-classic horror film “Friday the 13th” is set.

As lovers of immersive entertainment experiences like haunted houses, Decker and Schuett not only saw their wedding as a way to incorporate their interests into their nuptials, but as a way to involve their friends and family as well.

“We are going to have a wedding that is going to give that same experience that the two of us love to our friends and family because we enjoy that super immersive detailed thing when we go,” Decker said. “We just wanted to share that with them too.”