Courtney Rohde and Sam Slack wanted an outdoor wedding, but they wanted their venue to include a covered area. Luckily, the groom’s parents (the owners of Bristol Properties) had recently bought a vacant warehouse with the intention of turning it into boat storage. Courtney and Sam approached them with the “crazy idea” of having their wedding there 10 short months later. The renovation was a weekly family affair up until the last minute. With help from friends and family in the eleventh hour, the project was complete. The result is a beautiful new event space that is now used for both boat storage and summer weddings.
Both Courtney’s and Sam’s families love hunting and the outdoors (Sam proposed to Courtney at the top of Toketee Falls), so the couple decided to use myrtle—the same tree Courtney’s family uses to make duck blinds (hunting camouflage)—instead of flowers for the arbor and table arrangements. The arbor also included hydrangeas that Sam’s mother, Claudia, had dried for the couple the fall they got engaged. And for a final personal touch, drinks were served in a cedar-strip canoe built by Sam when he was in high school.
