THE CEREMONY

Seven different ceremony sites, each with a different feel, to nurture and highlight your loving.

When you drive into our farm, it is as if you have left a bit of civilization behind.  You pass all sorts of homes on the roads leading to our farm, some churches, grocery stores, small businesses, a few gas stations.  Twenty minutes ago you might have been in the Asheville airport. Fifteen minutes ago you might have been in downtown Asheville at a microbrewery.  An hour ago, you might have been worrying about something related to work or a disagreement with a friend. Whether you are arriving as the couple who is getting married or as a guest or vendor, there’s a notable change, once you round the curve on the narrow gravel road leading into the farm.  It’s peace. You bring your whole self here, from all sorts of locations, but you find something in common: a place where you can just “be.”

It’s not unusual to see 3-4 hawks flying across the fields, numerous rabbits scurrying for cover, blue birds sitting on the fence posts, herons fishing in the river.  The shade of an old sycamore sends its canopy out widely, inviting you to rest within its embrace. The sound of the river soothes and the colors of the garden are so beautiful you almost want to eat them.  All of these sites provide our couples and their guests with the opportunity to celebrate love and commitment in a way that feels natural, vulnerable yet protected. It’s rare to find one piece of land that has so many different natural environments within its boundaries.

Certainly there’s something to be said for beach weddings or weddings that occur in hotel ballrooms, but the gentle beauty of a private family farm where the values of the people who operate the business are as straightforward as the beauty of the natural environment that envelopes you is something special indeed.
Think about it for just a moment:  where do you want to be when you are proclaiming the most important values of your life and the most lasting personal choice you can possibly make?  By a river that is as constant as it is changing, like a marriage? Beneath the shade of an ancient sycamore that stands in one place with roots growing deep and spreading out shade that invites people to rest next to you, like a good marriage and strong family should be?  In the middle of a flower garden where color feels as if it’s popping before your very eyes and butterflies hover over the nectar, just like the sensuous way you feel about your sweetheart? Or maybe you want to stand in the middle of an open field and throw your arms up into the air and say to yourself and the world:  “I DO! I do embrace this life with all its unknown possibilities and I want to say this without timidity and in the full knowledge that our futures, like the vast sky above us, are open.”

Whatever particular feeling you have for your beloved, you can find a space at Hidden River that matches your love and/or inspires you to become even more. If you have wedding ideas flowing through your mind but you do not yet have the location where you can envision yourself standing with your beloved, surrounded by your closest family and friends, then Hidden River may just offer you that beautiful ceremony location that helps you to solidify your wedding ideas.  Will it be a pond? A river? An Old Tree? A flower garden? An open field? What feels right for your love?

 

THE CARRIAGE

Hidden River is a rare, truly unique venue.

At Hidden River, we believe that love should always bring couples to their weddings, that’s why our draft horse is named: “Dr. Love.” He pulls an elegant wedding carriage or a casual surrey which typically brings the bride or partner to the ceremony site, waits for the couple during the ceremony, and then whisks them both away for what we call the ceremony “victory lap.”

An Asheville wedding in a farm setting is not complete without our wedding carriage. We call it “functional fantasy,” because it helps the bride (usually) get from “here to there” and it gives the couple a little bit of time to breathe and relax once the ceremony concludes. It’s all part of what we do to help make this the most real day in your life and the best day of your life to date (it should be the beginning of many more amazing days, not the pinnacle).

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