Today we’d like to introduce you to Meghan Carstensen
Meghan, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
My husband, Bryan and I live in Sauk Rapids on our 40 acre farm where we have some beef cows and a pair of donkeys. We had mostly used our farm for crops and grazing, when Bryan thought that we could used the beautiful spot by our ponds for something more than just pasture! We had plans to get married but didn’t know where. Why not here on the farm?! We plowed the land up, leveled and trimmed and manicured a couple acres of space where we eventually put up our 40×80′ wedding tent! We host ceremonies and receptions here from June to October each year. After a lot of hard work and planning, the first wedding held on site was ours on August 25th, 2018. Since then, we have been so blessed to be able to host 59 weddings since then! Going into our 7th season, we are so excited to meet the next happy couples and be here to help celebrate their love along with their families and friends! This journey has been so much more than we ever expected. Each wedding leaving us with fantastic memories and new friends. It’s an honor to have these wonderful people choose our space for such an important life event. Each year we add something more like our bridge to the island, the deck and fire pit, and some good looking fencing to define the space! We now are the proud parents of a 3 1/2 (Cody) and 2 year old (Kassidy) who get to help us wedding prep each week and are learning how to celebrate LOVE! To say we are blessed is an understatement! Happy Planning!
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Weather has been pretty good to us! We experienced some snowy weddings in our first years which has lead us to changing our date offerings. All in all it’s been a lot of fun! We have had the sweetest couples and the most supportive family and neighbors in our corner. It makes the stresses less. In each wedding weekend, we learn something new and another way to help make the next go even more smoothly.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
Being our wedding venue is located on our farm, where we spend most of our time and where we raise our children, I feel it brings an extra sense of “family” to the weddings. Our goal for each event/wedding is to make everyone feel at home and welcomed. I am the unofficial wedding coordinator and am at each wedding, for Friday set up, wedding Saturday and Sunday clean up to help each step of the way. Each couple is different and each comes with a different view on how their “perfect” day should be. I’m there to help that vision come to life! I’m a born assistant and I thrive in the background, ready to help and support! It’s what fills my cup. So I guess you could say, we go above and beyond with nothing but true care in mind, always.
We’d be interested to hear your thoughts on luck and what role, if any, you feel it’s played for you?
We have been very fortunate to have chosen the type of structure we chose for our venue. The tent was ‘Plan C’ and it’s worked out so great! We were able to operate during the times when things were closing left and right because of restrictions. I wouldn’t say luck, but our work ethic has always gotten us thought. Blessed and grateful are two of my favorite ways to explain our lives. Bryan and I both come from families with supportive parents and siblings and the best friends that have been there to help with pretty much anything over the years! It takes a village but we have one in all of them.
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