The View began long before there was a wedding venue here.

This land was once our family farm, and some of my earliest memories are rooted here. It was simple farm life — cattle in the fields, chickens, dogs, cats, long summer days baling hay and a family working hard to make a living. My grandmother seemed to have a relationship with every animal, including a feisty cow named Buttercup who was one of her favorites.

As a kid, it felt like its own little world.

Years later, the farm had changed, and the land offered us something new: a blank canvas.

Tammy had always carried a creative side and a love for bringing people together. She had dreamed about the idea of a wedding venue for years, and at the same time, we began to recognize a real need in our area. There simply wasn't anything quite like what we were imagining.

Somewhere along the way, a need and a passion collided.

There wasn't one dramatic moment when we decided to build The View. It grew slowly through conversations, ideas, sketches, and a lot of dreaming about what this place could become.

We spent close to a year working with an architect and refining the design. We changed things, reconsidered things, and kept asking ourselves what would make the experience better for the couples and families who would someday celebrate here.

One thing we knew from the beginning was that we never wanted to lose what made the property special.

The view.

So we designed the building around it, with an entire side of glass and large doors that open the room to the landscape beyond. Other features became part of the vision too — the spiral staircase, the bride and groom suites, and a building designed from the ground up specifically for weddings.

Even the name came from that same simple idea.

At some point during the planning, we realized we needed to call this place something. We stood there looking out across the property and asked ourselves, “What are we really offering here?”

We looked around and laughed.

“The view!!”

And that was it.

Then came the part that tested the dream.

We had begun planning before COVID, but construction started right in the middle of the pandemic. Suddenly, materials were harder to find, lead times stretched for months, and things that should have been simple became anything but. The large glass doors that were so important to the design had a lead time of roughly 36 weeks.

There was no roadmap for building a wedding venue in the middle of that.

We just kept going.

The first year of construction was almost entirely work that no one could see. Underground utilities, earthwork, fencing, foundations — a lot of effort with very little standing above the ground.

Looking back, there's something fitting about that.

So much of anything worthwhile begins with work that nobody sees.

Then, during the second year, the building finally began to rise. What had existed for so long in our conversations and on paper was suddenly standing in front of us. People started noticing. The dream was becoming real.

By the time our first wedding approached, we were excited, exhausted, and more than a little nervous.

We learned very quickly that we didn't know what we didn't know.

We brought in a consultant who helped us establish systems and understand the countless details involved in running a wedding venue well. But plenty of lessons still came the old-fashioned way — by doing the work, making mistakes, solving problems, and figuring things out as we went.

And there were some memorable moments.

Our painter backed out late in the project. Deadlines were closing in. Tammy and I spent more than one night working until the early hours of the morning, including hanging wallpaper in the bathrooms while wondering whether everything would actually be ready in time.

Then the first wedding day arrived.

And somehow, all of that stress disappeared into the background.

There was a couple standing in this place we had imagined for so long, surrounded by family and friends, celebrating one of the biggest days of their lives.

That was when something really clicked for us.

The View was never going to be just a building.

We weren't interested in simply handing someone the keys and wishing them well. We wanted to know our couples. We wanted to walk alongside them, help make the process easier, take care of the details we could, and celebrate with them when their day finally arrived.

Over time, that became the heart of The View.

Every week brings another family together. Another couple walks through the doors carrying all the excitement, nerves, hopes, and anticipation that come with a wedding day.

And somehow, after all these weddings, that still hasn't gotten old.

There is an energy here on a wedding day that is hard to describe. People are happy. Families are together. There is laughter, emotion, anticipation, and a sense that something meaningful is beginning.

That is what continues to fuel us.

More than anything, we want couples to walk into The View and feel at home. We want them to feel that planning a wedding does not have to be overwhelming. We want them to look around and think:

“This feels right.

They're going to take care of us.

We can actually enjoy this.”

The property has changed a great deal since the days of that old family farm, but in some ways, its purpose hasn't changed all that much.

It is still a place where people gather, it is still a place where memories are made.

And now, it is a place where new families begin.

We're not simply hosting weddings, we're celebrating the beginning of marriages.