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Hey people,
Here is a little background info for whoever is interested in finding out more about us, and our journey to becoming Decatur County Wedding Venue/ Orchard owners.
To start off, here’s a little bit of “our story” Let me set the scene. It’s 2015, both of us aren’t necessarily looking to be in a relationship, but also not opposed if we found someone we couldn’t live without. At the time I was working for a local fitness company and I had to help promote at the local fair. I was sitting at the booth when right in front of me stood this tall, handsome, blonde haired man! (Side note: I had recently seen pictures of him as he was in a wedding of a close friend of mine’s sister. After seeing pictures, of course I sent him a ‘friend request’ but nothing came of that.) It was one of those moments where you think “is that him?” or “no, it can’t be” because you had only seen him from social media and didn’t personally know him. You’re probably thinking I darted from the booth I was working and introduced myself. Well, you’d be wrong. I just blew it off as if it was nothing and continued working the booth for the remainder of the night. As I was leaving for the evening, I noticed he is in a barn I just walked by. So, me being me, I walk back as if I forgot something at the booth (which I didn’t) just to hope he would see me. Ahh here we are again, you probably think “yes, he saw her”. Again, you’d be wrong. We didn’t speak a word, and I went home. The next day I was looking cute and decided to post a selfie on social media. Later that day I feel a buzz come from my phone and it’s a Facebook message from the one and only Vital Hulsbosch. To say I nearly fainted would be an understatement. I felt like a celebrity messaged me. We decided to meet up at the local fair and the rest is history. We start dating later that month. We got engaged the following October, and we said “I do” September 23, 2017. Those are all stories for another time.
How did we go from that in 2015 to buying an orchard and wedding venue in 2019? Let me fill you in. In April of 2018 I became a realtor; therefore, as soon as local real estate hits the market, I know about it (for the most part). In June of 2018, we decided to sell our first home. When we sold our house, we were ready to buy a house to flip as that is something Vital enjoys doing. We had found a perfect house to remodel and live in. We offered, and after some negotiations, the offer was accepted in June of 2018. It was a foreclosure and was in the process of being transferred to the VA. Most of the time that doesn’t mean the process will take long, but in our case it did. Some of the paperwork hadn’t been filed properly and the house was essentially put on the market before the VA owned it. While we were waiting, we looked at another property as a potential to build a wedding venue on. When the house we were going to purchase got removed from the market in September 2018, we put in an offer on the other property and it got accepted! How exciting! We closed on that property in on Vital’s birthday in October 2018. At this point we were so excited for all of the possibilities this property held. A little over one month later, I’m on the Broker Listing website and noticed that Highpoint Orchard was listed for sale. I immediately called Vital and to discuss if this is something we think we can handle/ afford and is truly the next step we see for us. The timing was terrible since we just purchased a property. Of course, we decide we at least need to go see the property before making any other decisions. We toured the home a few days later. We fell in love, but there were a lot of hurdles and we knew it wouldn’t be easy. The prepping, planning, chats of pros and cons seemed to go on forever. When we decided that we wanted to purchase the property we still had bank meetings, architect meetings, had meetings with the previous owner. Once everything was in check, we finally closed on the property in February of 2019. Why did we decide to buy a wedding venue? Well, the short answer is that it was a dream of ours for some time. Was the timing perfect? Definitely not! When we got married, it was nearly impossible to find a venue that could hold the amount of people we were expecting and not cost an arm and a leg. With all those factors in mind along with it being a dream we decided to go into the wedding venue business. We are capable and most of all this is something that is a dream of ours.
So, here we are a year into this whole orchard/ wedding venue owner thing, and we are loving it. Am I just saying that? To be completely honest it depends on the day. If this was easy everyone would do it. But we like the challenge and every day is different. Today, yes, I am loving being a wedding venue and orchard owner. I hope you enjoyed getting to know a little bit about us and how/why we got to where we are. I wanted to start this to connect more on a personal level and to show this isn’t all smiles and wonderfulness. We have our struggles. I want to show you what we are up to in our lives and what we are doing around here to make Highpoint Events something everyone can enjoy.