Once we closed on the Crooked Willow property, everything began moving so fast! Derek quit his job and got the kids enrolled in school in the area. Jody still kept her corporate job (and would for about a year and a half) before we both worked full-time at Crooked Willow.
Jody would wake up at 5 am every Monday and drive to Minneapolis to work her corporate job all week long. The friends she stayed with during the week actually were helping with the construction of Crooked Willow. So while Jody was driving down to the cities our friend would be driving up to the Crooked Willow property to stay and work all week long before driving back on the weekends. Jody and him basically switched spots during the week!
We spent about 6 months renovating the property before our very FIRST wedding (which was set to happen that July). Leading up to that day, we were working 7 days a week, 10-12 hours a day, trying to get the property wedding-ready! Despite all the research we did on running a wedding venue, we still felt like we had no clue what we were doing! But we were excited! And our first ever wedding was FAST approaching…