DULUTH — Weddings often involve a lot of flowers. And for couples who get married at Agate Acres just outside of Two Harbors, their ceremony is maybe 500 feet away from where their flowers were grown.
It all starts in the fall. That’s when owners Emily Richey and Kyle Cook meet with couples looking to get married at their former dairy farm. The couples decide where they want to hold a ceremony: one of two arbors, a large open field, a bridge over a small creek or, in case of rain, the farm’s large hoop house. They discuss a color palette and flowers, and then Richey plans her crop around when she’ll need certain flowers.
“So if you’re getting married on Sept. 5, and you want to have 800 sunflowers, then I know that I will have those sunflowers ready for you,” Richey said. “Doing the design part of the wedding and planning the flowers is one of my favorite parts of the process. That, and sharing this beautiful space with people on the best day of their lives.”
Contributed / Stacy Anderson Photography
Richey and Cook purchased the farm in 2020. The farm had been in the same family for around 105 years.
The couple found the farm in a slightly unusual way. Friends Heather-Marie Bloom and John Hatcher had put out a classified ad looking for their own farm to purchase and received a lot of replies. When the friends purchased their new property,
in Barnum, Richey and Cook asked about the other owners who had replied to the ad.
“We were looking for someplace between Two Harbors and Duluth, and we found this place,” Richey said. “It was built as a dairy farm in the 1910s, thus the red barn. But it’s lived many lives since then.”
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Now the farm operates as a community supported agriculture, CSA, for both flowers and vegetables, operates a farm stand, and is part of a weekly summer/fall farm trail event.
Weddings came to the venue a little bit later, as Richey wanted another way for people to interact with the property. They hosted their first couples in 2023 and have been booking people from late June to October ever since.
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“The cool part is seeing what couples dream up and how they utilize the space and decorate it,” Richey said. “We’ve had some deck it out completely with flowers, others take on a theme. No matter what, they’ve got a gorgeous backdrop to work with, and they’ve always turned out beautiful.”
Couples tend to pick an outdoor location for the ceremony, then move the reception to the covered hoop house that can seat up to 160 people. Dances tend to take place on the first floor of the barn, and there’s parking in a designated field right at the farm entrance.
“We have everything you need for your big day, all of the infrastructure,” Richey said. “And what we don’t have, we have connections with several local vendors to get. I love working with the small businesses of one to two people that make up most of the wedding industry up here.”
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Teri Cadeau / Duluth Media Group
Teri Cadeau is a features reporter for the Duluth News Tribune. Originally from the Iron Range, Cadeau has worked for several community newspapers in the Duluth area, including the Duluth Budgeteer News, Western Weekly, Weekly Observer, Lake County News-Chronicle, and occasionally, the Cloquet Pine Journal. When not working, she’s an avid reader, crafter, dancer, trivia fanatic and cribbage player.