The lady who owned the property lived in a house on 75 acres about 15 minutes away. She and her husband bought the property to turn it into a venue and bed and breakfast, but he tragically passed away from a heart attack six months after the purchase. She was sitting on it, no longer wanting to go forward with that dream. It was 2017, the housing market had not yet exploded and we reached out to see if she would sell at a price we could afford. She did.

We had our work cut out for us. No one had lived on site in over 6 years. Nature had taken back everything. Melissa continued to work as a social worker in Holland and to drop the kids off and pick them up after school for the next two years while I spent every waking hour on renovation and landscaping projects. Melissa would come after a long day and join me felling unwanted trees and planting wanted trees in the evening. Many of the trees came in large, burlap-wrapped root balls and we had to engineer ways to get them off the trailer without any equipment.

We had to hustle and find every opportunity for loans due to the fact that when you leave a non-profit you leave with no equity, no capital. Financial capital, that is. This time around we felt embolden by the experiential and social capital we had built in Holland. And thankfully the Good Lord made a way. While we had hoped to open in 2019, the time it took to get through all the red tape with the township delayed us such that we only ended up hosting 3 weddings in 2019. 2020 would be our big year. Of course, if you recall, 2020 turned out to be a unique time. While Covid-19 delayed our season, the fact that we were technically an outdoor venue saved us. By the end of June we were able to open up the venue with a max guest count of 100. We hosted 36 weddings that year. But Black Sheep Shelter was officially launched. And in 2021 we filled every weekend slot and even a number of weekdays for a total of 68 weddings. And every year after we have booked out all of our weekends.

Our business strategy, if you want to call it that, is quite simple. On the one hand we have tried to distinguish ourselves from the wedding industrial complex and particularly other venues by being fully transparent about prices and never pressuring potential couples. There are no hidden fees or extras or stipulations that you go through this or that vendor. We also tried to include all the main things you need on site to make it simple. We were told that our website should be all pictures and that we should use very few words. We did the opposite. We thoroughly explained what we offered, had a large FAQ section, and even shared some of our story and values. When we walk prospective couples around the property we make it clear that our goal is to help this be as stress-free as possible, and the result has been that we have attracted couples with similar values. Second, we do our best to create a beautiful space. We describe it as a botanical gardens venue. Our website reads

The romantic ruins have been left in place and a conversation has unfurled between the built environment and the less tame world of the flora and fauna. The Shelter evokes a sense of union in a variety of ways: by blending what is usually indoor space with outdoor space; through letting the stores that inhabit the old and the dilapidated stand amongst the young and inspiring; and in doing so we are invited to open our interiors to the exterior and to see the marriages which are begun in this space as echoes of a greater spiritual union between Creation and the Creator. For us it also captures a deep conviction that nature holds a beauty that we are not meant to deconstruct, but are rather invited to stand back and behold with gratitude. Keeping with the horticultural theme, a modern glasshouse has been built to dance under the stars while enjoying a space with heating and cooling.

There are few things that bring me as much joy as designing physical spaces. I started my undergrad studying Art and Biology, and looking back I probably should have stayed in those lanes. My free time is spent drawing up designs for houses, contemplating décor, or crushing over the textures and colors of ornamental conifers. Because of this, the designing of Black Sheep Shelter was a fulfilling endeavor.  Good art starts with constraints. The property dictated the core ingredients I had to work with. A stately brick farmhouse, almost 150 years old. The partial barn structure. Buildings with great rusted patina. Something old. Ready to be joined to something new. Modern pavers for the aisle and a patio. Granite colored concrete. A repurposed shipping container with a green roof for a restroom. A sleek bronze almost black modern glasshouse. Modern rustic. Modern organic, but with more wabi sabi grit. This almost minimalist approach to the human built structures pairs nicely with a kind of maximalist landscaping philosophy. On either side of the central aisle I wanted to recreate a forest aesthetic so I followed Japanese botanist Dr. Akira Miyawaki method of high density plantings. The New Dutch Wave reintroduced wild plants to bring nature back into formal spaces. I confess I was obsessed with the work of Piet Oudolf and his New Perennialism, and the eastern field pays homage to his genius with its many species of ornamental grasses and wildflowers traipsing in a tangled Hochstaudenflur (German for “a community of tall, perennial growth”).   

Hopefully the pictures below will speak to this beauty. Though none of them capture the early morning September sun on the dewy miscanthus. You only experience that before all the people arrive and the day is not fully awake.