'They saved our day:' How strangers came together to pull off a wedding after venue shut down just 11 days prior

CATHY WURZER: Time, friends, for another Thank You, Stranger segment. If you've ever spent a lot of time planning a big wedding, this one's for you. MPR producer Ellen Finn has the story.

ELLEN FINN: Katelyn and Isaac Nelson met when they were in high school and kept in touch on and off for years. When Katelyn was away from her home state, Minnesota, for grad school in Alabama, she and Isaac started dating and decided to get married. When they started planning their wedding, the first thing they did was book a venue that would hold a lot of guests in Minnesota.

KATELYN NELSON: So we had just about 200 people who came to our wedding, and we put a lot of prep work into it. We flew back a couple times to do some venue tours and dress fittings and all of the meetings. And a lot goes into planning a wedding, so we were talking constantly for a year about just trying to get all of the details together for our perfect day.

Well, 11 days before our wedding, I remember Isaac looking me in the eyes. I was cooking dinner. He said, not everything will be perfect with our wedding. And I was like, what happened? And he's like, we're going to go sit down on the couch. And I was like, I really need to know what happened now. We received an email saying that our venue was closed. No refunds, no questions that we could ask and talk to anyone.

And so we started freaking out. And I was like, I don't believe that. That's just not something on my realm or on my ideas of something that was going to happen or go wrong. And so it took me a little while to process what was going on. Honestly, I think back to that time, and it's almost a blur, because you just never think something like that is going to happen.

We were down in Auburn, Alabama, so a long ways away from home where we were getting married in Minnesota, and so we started calling all of our friends and family. And my background is in marketing, so I was like, let's just try putting something out on social media. So we picked TikTok, and I put a video out.

And so we have nowhere to go and not getting our money back. So if anyone knows anything in Isanti, Minnesota, in that area, please let us know. We are just trying to figure out what to do.

ELLEN FINN: The video quickly racked up more than 6 million views and 7,000 comments.

KATELYN NELSON: I could not believe how much it blew up. It was crazy. There were so many people reaching out, being like, how can we help? I had people saying, my backyard is in the Minneapolis area. You are welcome to have your wedding in our backyard. We had people reaching out and just seeing if there was any way that they could help us out. And it was overwhelming, the amount of community support we got.

All of our vendors, without even hesitation, were like, we'll make whatever do work. In fact, I had my hair and makeup stylist sending me recommendations of people that would maybe have an opening for our wedding. And my vendors were making calls during all of it, trying to help us to find a location.

I live down in Alabama, and we tell people all the time here about how nice people are, the Minnesota nice. And this truly showcased how amazing people in Minnesota are.

ELLEN FINN: Katelyn and Isaac suddenly had a lot of offers on the table. But the owner of one venue, Majestic Oaks in Ham Lake, offered to take the stress off of the couple even more.

KATELYN NELSON: They just said, hey. Give us the names and numbers of all of your vendors, and we'll do the rest. And that was such a freeing feeling to be able to just go back into enjoying leading up to such a big day in our lives. And going into our wedding, I was surprisingly stress free. It was just such an amazing moment, and everything was so perfect.

It was a crazy whirlwind, and Majestic Oaks was just incredible. We truly can't say enough about how much they saved our day. I feel like sometimes, you start to get caught up in all of the details, making sure that every single little thing is perfect. But when something as big as this venue change happened, we learn that it's really about the people that are surrounding you that get to help you to celebrate.

And even right now as I'm talking about it, I have that overwhelming feeling of just love and gratitude and compassion. And I just really still can't believe that so many individual people and businesses wanted to be able to help out. So from the bottom of both mine and Isaac's hearts and our families, we all just really want to say thank you.

CATHY WURZER: Oh, I love that. That's Katelyn Nelson talking to MPR producer Ellen Finn. Do you have a story about kindness from a stranger? We want to hear it. Email us at minnesotanow@mpr.org. You can call and leave a voicemail the old fashioned way, 612-361-1252.