Hidden River Events

Monica and Jim April 2011

top

Sarah and Nick-April 2011

Thank you so much for mak­ing our wed­ding so incred­i­bly spe­cial. From the amaz­ingly tal­ented local ven­dors, to Jeanne’s per­son­al­ized cer­e­mony and sweet mes­sage on learn­ing to love, Nick and I couldn’t have been hap­pier. It brought tears to both of our eyes to hear your words of inspi­ra­tion and encour­age­ment for our jour­ney ahead as a mar­ried cou­ple. It sur­prised and delighted us both to hear all that you had to say, and that you included our guests so much in the process. It spoke to both of our hearts, and will be some­thing that we always cherish.

It was a chal­lenge begin­ning to plan our wed­ding from out of town but you two made it so EASY and FUN! As the date approached I grew more and more excited to see it all come together. To see old friends and fam­ily, to taste the food, the wine, the cake, to see the beau­ti­ful one-of-a-kind flower arrange­ments, the horses, and to hear the great music — but most of all to see Nick at the altar. I can tell you now that I thor­oughly enjoyed every moment of the plan­ning process, and am so thrilled that we were so lucky to have found such a per­fect venue for the two of us. We love Hid­den River and the NC moun­tains and really felt that every­thing about our wed­ding reflected who we are as indi­vid­u­als, and now as a mar­ried cou­ple! What a spec­tac­u­lar event. We love Hid­den River and the NC moun­tains and really felt that every­thing about our wed­ding reflected who we are as indi­vid­u­als, and now as a mar­ried cou­ple! What a spec­tac­u­lar event. We can only hope that other engaged cou­ples have the luck that we had in find­ing the per­fect venue and pas­sion­ate and kind peo­ple to work with for their wed­ding.
We only hope that other engaged cou­ples have the luck that we had in find­ing the per­fect venue and pas­sion­ate and kind peo­ple to work with for their wedding.

Thank you for shar­ing in our joy, you are the best!
Sarah & Nick Wagner

top

Laura and Weogo

Thank you, thank you for the most per­fect, most beau­ti­ful wed­ding ever! I really mean it! Our friends and fam­ily are still talk­ing about how won­der­ful it was. The most com­mon descrip­tors peo­ple are using to describe it: ‘so sweet and so much of you two in the cer­e­mony” and “it was magic” and “I have never been so moved by the preacher’s words.” Really, Jeanne, it was just won­der­ful. “Thank you” just doesn’t begin to express how Weogo and I feel about the work that you did putting it all together. Wow!

top

Dale and Ivanne

We want to thank you for the won­der­ful job you did with all the event prepa­ra­tions for our family’s wed­ding. Love that car­riage ride! Your fam­ily has a won­der­ful idea for the wed­dings and it absolutely leaves a delight­ful cache of mem­o­ries for years to come. The two gen­tle­men who helped with the logis­tics were the most gen­tle­manly guys I have met in a long time. God bless you for years to come.

top

Matthew and Elizabeth

I just wanted to take a moment to let you know how grate­ful we both are. Last night was the wed­ding the both of us dreamed of. Not only the loca­tion, but the cer­e­mony itself was amaz­ing. We espe­cially appre­ci­ate the way you included our son. We will be sure to spread the word about you and your fab­u­lous ser­vice and amaz­ing location.

top

Carolyn — Mother of Christina

Thanks again for all the hard work you and your staff did to make the wed­dings so won­der­ful. Thanks for fol­low­ing your dreams in Hid­den River and mak­ing the place avail­able for us to enjoy dur­ing a spe­cial time in our family’s life. You really have some­thing spe­cial in that piece of prop­erty. God Bless.

top

Amanda — May 2008

Jeanne, thank you so much for the won­der­ful cer­e­mony at our wed­ding.  You made our day so much more spe­cial than even we could have imag­ined.  Nat and I both felt like you spoke every word from your heart, and it made a dif­fer­ence not only to us, but to every guest as well.  So many peo­ple have com­mented on dif­fer­ent things that you talked about.  Sev­eral peo­ple, my par­ents included, men­tioned the part about look­ing back at your past with your part­ner to remem­ber why you fell in love and chose to spend your lives together.  My most vivid emo­tion and mem­ory from my wed­ding day was expe­ri­enc­ing a “per­fect” moment with Nat, Ellery, my fam­ily and friends.  The peace­ful­ness and com­plete­ness of the moment was amaz­ing.  I hope I never for­get that feel­ing as long as I live.  I even had an uncle come to Nat to tell him thank you for mak­ing him cry; he didn’t remem­ber what it was like to cry, espe­cially out of joy.

top

Tamara and Gareth — June 2008

Shanon and Mike’s sto­ry­book wed­ding would never have been pos­si­ble with­out your amaz­ing cer­e­mony. No one could have cap­tured the essence of their spir­its the way you did. The facil­ity was per­fect in every way right down to those classy restrooms! Your hard-working staff is amaz­ing.  I real­ize I set the bar extremely high in my expec­ta­tions. Hid­den River, you, and your kids sur­passed them all. Our fam­ily will for­ever be grate­ful to you all. (Sharon, Mother-of-the-Bride)

Every­thing was gor­geous, and I can’t stop look­ing through all of Bill’s pic­tures!  Every­thing was per­fect, and I’m so glad we got to work with you and your staff over the past few months.  You’ve been a plea­sure to work with, and I’m so glad you were able to bring my uncle’s words to life again.  I know he would have been thrilled and hum­bled.  We really appre­ci­ate every­thing you did to make our wed­ding perfect.

top

Nikki & Dan

Dear Jeanne,

I’m writ­ing to tell you about what we’ve been think­ing about dur­ing our engage­ment and why we selected Hid­den River for our wedding.

Before we became engaged, Dan and I thought about what hav­ing a cer­e­mony would (or would not) mean to us.  On the one hand, if we just lived with each other for 3 more years, we would be “mar­ried” under com­mon law. So, why have a cer­e­mony at all, we won­dered? But some­thing didn’t feel right to us about that. Then, we con­sid­ered the idea of a legal mar­riage with­out the cer­e­mony, but that again felt incon­se­quen­tial. We agreed that even if we were legally mar­ried, we wouldn’t feel mar­ried unless we had a full-out cer­e­mony and recep­tion. What then did hav­ing a cer­e­mony and recep­tion really mean to us that we weren’t will­ing to forego? We decided that, in part, we needed the peo­ple in our lives to wit­ness it and clas­sify it as a “mar­riage.” We also decided a cer­e­mony has value because it’s prob­a­bly eas­ier to say “I do” in the heat of the moment in front of one wit­ness than it is in front of a hun­dred peo­ple who have planned to be there for a year.

We then con­sid­ered why most mar­riages fail. We live in the unfor­tu­nate day and age where more than half of mar­riages end in divorce. Dan and I believe that part of the rea­son for this is the hype that a wed­ding has, which causes peo­ple to make a quick deci­sion about a huge com­mit­ment. Why wouldn’t you want to host a big party with all the peo­ple you love com­ing across the nation just for you? Brides espe­cially, when plan­ning for wed­dings, are con­stantly told “It’s *your* day. Do what *you* want.” The inten­tion, we’ve deduced, is to make us think that spend­ing a for­tune on our wed­ding is jus­ti­fied. Sure, this is “our” day and it is def­i­nitely a momen­tous mile­stone, but in the end it is just one day that marks the begin­ning of many future years of our *mar­riage.* This doesn’t mean we’re not spend­ing a decent amount on our wed­ding; we fig­ure this is the one and only day we plan on get­ting mar­ried. But we’ve been try­ing to keep things in per­spec­tive. What mat­ters in the end is not the flower choice, cake fla­vors, or even the pic­tures. What mat­ters is that after all the cake is eaten, the flow­ers wilted, the guests gone home—we have each other.

When we con­sid­ered what kind of place we would like to get mar­ried, we agreed that what­ever loca­tion we selected had to reflect who we are…and we have always been in love with the moun­tains. Among all the bus­tle of work and school, we will often take a week­end hik­ing trip to remem­ber who we are together with­out all the “noise.” It is in the moun­tains and out­side hik­ing that we find our­selves to be the most “us,” so to speak, and where we remem­ber how to lis­ten to each other most fully. What we dis­cov­ered, how­ever, is that when you go to a beau­ti­ful place for a wed­ding it can begin to feel more like a tourist attrac­tion, and it can get very expen­sive.  From a pack­aged estate wed­ding that costs a for­tune to an inex­pen­sive chapel wed­ding, money inevitably plays a role.

Know­ing that we’d likely put both a good deal of time and money (but not an exor­bi­tant amount) into our wed­ding, we began look­ing for a loca­tion with the hope of find­ing peo­ple who share our val­ues about love and mar­riage for a life­time, not just about the wed­ding day. When we found your site at Hid­den River and read your phi­los­o­phy of mar­riage and com­mit­ment, we knew we’d found “the place.” Not only is the loca­tion beau­ti­ful with a view of the moun­tains and horses in the pas­ture. Not only is Hid­den River far away from civ­i­liza­tion (because I didn’t want to be the bride run­ning across a busy street in her wed­ding dress). Not only is your farm peace­ful. But there is some­thing more: you and Katie and your fam­ily are there to run the farm and the busi­ness with gen­tle and under­stand­ing hearts, focus­ing on sim­plic­ity and “sub­tle grandeur” as I call it.

Jeanne, you aren’t a wed­ding ven­dor with a desire to push wed­ding jar­gon on eager cou­ples at exor­bi­tant wed­ding prices; you are an offi­ciant and a teacher who spends a lot of her life mar­ry­ing peo­ple and who just hap­pens to own a beau­ti­ful piece of prop­erty near Asheville. I remem­ber speak­ing with Katie the first time we vis­ited.  She told us that your favorite part of the job is speak­ing with brides and grooms about what they love about each other. I have to admit, I didn’t believe her until we met with you about our cer­e­mony.  Now I under­stand.  And guess what: there are oth­ers out there like you!

As we’ve gone along col­lect­ing ven­dors for the wed­ding, we’ve actu­ally joked many times that almost every per­son we’ve met in Asheville has more integrity than we’re used to find­ing in peo­ple. We’ve met a florist who loves flow­ers so much that she warned us she would not offer her ser­vices to us if she were forced, for instance, to spray paint flow­ers (not that we wanted her to). We’ve met a pho­tog­ra­pher who took us out to lunch on his own dime even after we’d put money down on a con­tract. We met a cake baker who was more than will­ing to brain­storm with us for two and a half hours, scrap­ping sev­eral ideas along the way and agree­ing to try some­thing no one’s ever asked her to do, just so we would be happy (and at no extra cost to us). We’re start­ing to think we’re mov­ing to the wrong loca­tion (in Cary).

When it comes to our wed­ding day, we decided that our wed­ding should not only reflect us but also what comes after it:  mar­riage. We’ve thought of some things to do to make our day spe­cial and to move us toward our goal of grow­ing old together.  On our RSVP’s, we’ll be ask­ing peo­ple to write down their wed­ding song and we’ll use these songs in our recep­tion for danc­ing. Each song we use will be intro­duced by our DJ, who is also our friend. As a way of empha­siz­ing the impor­tance of long term com­mit­ment, we will also be includ­ing a rit­ual involv­ing all the mar­ried cou­ples.  They’ll be asked to get out on the dance floor and keep danc­ing until the num­ber of years they’ve been mar­ried is called aloud by the DJ.  The last cou­ple on the dance floor is the one to gets the bou­quet or, as an alter­na­tive, receives the honor of throw­ing the bouquet.

We know *our* day won’t be per­fect.  It could rain (which we hear is good luck).  We are not expect­ing per­fec­tion. In fact, we always like hear­ing those wacky sto­ries about wed­ding mis­takes and we wouldn’t mind hav­ing some amus­ing ones to tell of our own. As long as the wed­ding rep­re­sents us, as long as our guests have fun, and as long as Dan and I have each other, we will be con­tent. Because when all is said and done, a wed­ding lasts a few hours…but a mar­riage is until death do us part.

Thanks for shar­ing our ideas with oth­ers.  I hope oth­ers find our con­tem­pla­tions helpful.

Sin­cerely,

Nikki & Dan

top