Wedding Planning

A love story

For more than 14 years, I have planned other people's weddings held at our farm, a job I loved. When I founded South Pond Farms in 2009, a 60 acre farm in Ontario and restored the 150 year old barn into a space for farm to table dinners, culinary experiences and of course weddings, little did I know it would become a 24 hour, seven day a week adventure. I had a vision of people arriving in surprise at our little spot of paradise and being immersed in natural beauty and wonderful food cultivated from our gardens and prepared in our kitchen. 

The backdrop

Before South Pond was even on my mind, a more urgent situation arose, the barn on the property was on the verge of collapse. I met Shawn when he was recommended to help put a few boards back on to keep the wind from pulling the barn apart. That’s how we met. Shawn, a restoration expert, a seventh generation cowboy from the hills nearby. His cowboy boots were not a fashion statement for a barn dance, it’s what he wore every day. His shirt opened that extra button, his cowboy hat always on and his funny expressions like when he left us on the front porch by announcing he was “leaving for higher ground” or when I returned from a trip into town - “did you meet up with high winds and wildfires?” What exactly did those expressions mean?  

I was a girl with Vermont roots, but had lived in the city most of my adult years, going to university in Montreal, raising my daughters in Toronto with their father, finally moving to the country in search of a little simpler way of life. I wanted the girls,  5, 7, 9 and 11 at the time of our arrival at our farm in Pontypool, to raise chickens, tend and harvest our vegetable garden, make delicious things from what we grew and learn a connection to nature.

When Shawn came to the farmhouse for the first time, I had a chicken named Tom that we had hatched from our incubator in the basement, living in a bird cage hanging from the kitchen window. There would soon be a goat living at the bottom of the stairs (temporarily). I had our wood cook stove on the go with a stew simmering at the back for dinner. I’m sure he looked around and wondered what sort of place this was. 

From then on, he sort of hung around, suggesting a new driveway, planning in his mind how the land would look when he was finished with his “rearranging.” Sitting at the kitchen table for breakfast, we often spotted him out in the fields - driving his car - surveying the property. We weren’t really sure what to make of him. I didn’t have much time to think about it. I had four girls in three schools. I drove over 100 kilometers a day from the bus stop to schools, picking up later in the evening after sporting events, weekend rehearsals, piano lessons and athletic practice and all the while, starting a home based food delivery business that I called Farm Flavours: Weekend Baskets to Go - the beginning of what I thought would be a catering career.

All in

One evening several months later, he gathered the girls around the cook stove with the intent of saying a few words. Words didn’t come easily to Shawn, and honestly, they still don’t. He often sat in the chair by the cook stove, waiting for the next event in the house to occur, maybe even a bit of dinner, quietly surveying the goings on. He asked if he might take their mother out on a date. From that moment, as Olivia said in her speech at our wedding, that clinched it. They were all in.