We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Rachel Hasley a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Rachel , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

We founded Divanyx in 2011 after getting married. I have a bachelors in Graphic Design that allows me to professionally edit photos. My husband realized that talent of mine and had the idea that we both could become photographers with the plan of offering unique editing services as well. I was excited about the opportunity given that I was new to the area (having moved from Jalisco, Mexico to Minnesota) and I was seeking a job (at the time, it was very hard for me to find a graphic designer job).

After multiple photography lessons and camera equipment investment, we developed a distinctive eye that could certainly transform pictures into irreplaceable memories allowing people to cherish them for the rest of their lives.

In 2021, our passion for photography and getting that perfect shot led us to purchase a beautiful event center in Dodge Center, MN. Our plans and desires are to provide customers with the best venue and pictures for any celebration.

We truly believe that our background in photography will guide us to provide customers with a unique and stunning location for any event. We want all our customers and their guests to leave our venue with happy memories and positive experiences.

Rachel , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Beautiful Barn Venue and Professional Photography Serving Minnesota, Iowa, and Wisconsin. We founded Divanyx in 2011 with a distinctive eye that transforms pictures into irreplaceable memories allowing people to cherish them for the rest of their lives. In 2021, our passion for photography and getting that perfect shot led us to purchase a beautiful event center in Dodge Center, MN. Our plan and desire is to provide customers with the best venue and pictures for any celebration.

We’d love to hear about you met your business partner.

My cofounder/business partner is my husband Aaron Hasley. We met and fell in love in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. We both were staying at the same resort. I was there celebrating my mom’s birthday and he was there with his friends. We basically just had a short conversation one night and exchanged our contact information. I thought I was never going to see him again or hear from him because he lived in Minnesota, and I lived in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico. To my surprise, he emailed me right away and we started to have online conversations getting to know each other. We had a long-distance relationship and have been married since 2011.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

Having been the photographers of multiple weddings and having visited several venues, we had the dream of building our own venue. Before buying the wedding barn venue at Dodge Center, MN, we had a long path of opportunities that in the end, got shut down. We found three different lands where we wanted to build our dream venue, and due to different reasons, our vision kept getting denied. We were to the point where we started thinking it was not going to happen. A lot of time and investment was lost and we were extremely discouraged. After we left that dream aside for a little bit, we got contacted by a friend (who also is a realtor) with the news of a barn venue available for purchase. We were skeptical as we didn’t think that venue could be similar to what we were hoping to build. However, we were pleasingly surprised when we visited the venue and saw that it was absolutely beautiful. We immediately started thinking about ways to improve it to achieve our dream of having the best venue for events in MN. Sometimes when you get discouraged, that is the opportunity to rethink your plan and gain strength again.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://divanyx.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/divanyxeventcenter/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DivanyxEventCenterPhotography