We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Al + Lyndsey Johnson a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Al + Lyndsey , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

It all started 20+ years ago when we met in college, both studying art education. We have always loved to create and be in environments that push us to think out of the box. After college we took jobs at a summer camp that turned into full-time employment for 9 years. At camp we learned that we loved hosting and meeting people and preparing experiences for kids, families and retreat groups of all types and sizes. We were given the space and opportunity to work hard and connect with people in meaningful ways. While full time at the camp we began a side gig as wedding photographers. We resigned from the camp in 2008 and gave ourselves one year to go full time photography. We said yes to every opportunity and after one year had more work than we knew what to do with! As photographers we had gotten to watch outdoor venues pop up all over the Midwest, we watched how they were managed and thought to ourselves… that could be fun, a combination of all our experiences.

While other places in the US were growing with outdoor wedding options, we had noticed there were not a lot to offer in the Twin Ports area. So, we started playing the “What IF” game with each other. As we talked and dreamed one thing was certain, IF we found a property that would work for weddings it would have to be unique. So we watched, toured properties, took business classes, …took steps forward and learned.

400+ weddings and 10 years later we purchased an old green house (The Garden House) in the woods of northern Wisconsin in a town of 1200 people. We remember the day we stood in the largest of the green houses, filled with hanging baskets and trays of perennials and imagined to ourselves “would this be fun to have a wedding in?” The answer, inside, was a resounding YES. By the work and help of a “divine friend” of ours we were able to make the purchase and immediately begin transforming the space into what is now The Atrium.

Being a pair of workaholics definitely helped, but we were not prepared for mandatory things like codes, inspectors, and building usages. But we learned …A LOT. Probably our 2 biggest lessons were
1) the unknown can cause a lot of fear, so take a deep breath and learn
2) we have no money to make this work, so get creative and be patient

…and it worked.

Today we are able to offer a wedding venue style that is extremely rare. Our goal is to embrace that outdoorish garden feel we all seem to be drawn to. We have indoor and outdoor options, a lot of space, and a ton of experience to offer. But probably the part we love best is that we get to be part of so many weddings. Sure we find joy in making the space, mowing the lawn and making things grow, but it seems what feeds our hearts the most is actually helping make wedding dreams become a reality. We love the couples!

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

We found ourselves in the wedding industry a little over 20 yrs ago by accident. Some of our best friends in college were getting married, we had asked “how can we help with the wedding?” The bride, knowing we were “art students” assumed we could take pictures. It was that wedding that we learned quite quickly that it wasn’t about taking good pictures, it was about working with people. Our career at that point, Bible Camp Directors, had prepared us really well.

Other couples began to ask if we would photo their weddings, each year brought us more and more. Yes, we were art students but we had no clue how to photo weddings. We hadn’t taken an online course or gone to a seminar or even had a positive photography experience of our own. What we did do is study websites of photographers on the West Coast, they were doing something different than anything we saw in the Midwest. But we noticed something funny, almost every wedding someone would tell us “you did such a great job”. That sounds nice and all, but our “job” was supposed to be about taking great pictures …and they hadn’t seen any at that point, so how did they know? Again, we locked onto the notion that all aspects about these weddings are about how you make people feel. After about 5 yrs of being part-time photographers we had nervously quit our Camp Director careers and jumped into wedding photography full-time.

For the next 10 yrs our focus was on our new family, wedding photography …and building a couple houses ….yes, from scratch …by ourselves. As if family and photography wasn’t enough we had built, lived in, and sold some brand new houses. We look back and can see that creativity might be like a monster inside of us, it needs to be active.

Our last house we deliberately chose to be our “investment” house. We were feeling the pull to find a bigger “art project” and began being serious about finding a property to create a wedding venue. With our experience we have a hard time believing in irony. Shortly after the sale of our last house we had discovered that The Garden House, right across the highway from us, had been for sale. We investigated, envisioned, and made an offer.

The Atrium has been the ultimate outlet for being creative and taking every aspect of a wedding into our own hands, to work with couples and their dreams and

make every guest feel like we “did a good job”.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

At this point, I, Al Johnson, am going to step away and share my own personal experience.

In the beginning phases of transforming the property and buildings from a working green house into a wedding venue we were hit by so many unknown bureaucratic factors. We had little to no money, but to make the project work we had to spend more money on papers, talking and rules than any physical or material purchases, to this day. All the, what seemed like, subjective “can’t dos” were killing me. The work load has NEVER bothered me, I pride myself in being a work mule, but being told that a building that once had plants in it was not allowed to have groups of people in it was crushing me. I can vividly remember times were I would sneak back to a place no one was watching, fall on my knees crying, and begging for God to help me.

This might not be a typical response for this question. I do not have a “business” source to offer. But, it was this project that taught me just how much of my mental game is wrong, damaged, or skewed. It wasn’t about the codes or the architects, it was about how I was interpreting them, …how I had unattended baggage from my past. It was not a business lesson, but a life lesson. In this project, in biting off more than I can chew, I got to see things in me that could not hide anymore, I got to become VERY dependent on “something bigger” than me and became desperate to change.

I have been diving deep into healing, awareness, self care books and podcasts. To offer a nugget, my first “Oh my” was listening to Oprah’s Super Soul podcast with Eckart Tohle’s “A New Earth’.
I am definitely NOT saying I am now “fixed”, NO WAY. But, my view of The Atrium, of each client, and my family is so much healthier. I am SO THANKFUL for this experience, without taking on something this big, I do not think I would have seen this ugliness about myself.

Have you ever had to pivot?

Pivoting itself is a great lesson to learn. Probably, to do this well, the lesson we first need to learn is to hold your plans loosely.

As mentioned before, on the side of our photography career, we were building houses from the ground up. Our last house was built deliberately to be as attractive as possible and bring us as much investment money as possible. As we started taking steps towards being deliberate about finding a property to turn into a wedding venue a realtor had heard us, saw our vision and showed us a WONDERFUL property. We were so excited. Because the purchase was contingent on the sale of our “investment house” we had plenty of time to get prepared. This property was going to be “turn key” and a wedding venue style we had not quite seen in our 20yrs of photography. This was very exciting for us. We made an offer, worked with an investor, met with the city council, did logo and marketing designs, created a website and even had a booking for a future wedding. We were ready! After about 6 months of prepping, an offer came in that was an immediate purchase. Our hands were tied and we lost it. We gave ourselves a couple days to be bummed, basically mourn that dream.

About a month or so later, Lyndsey noticed that The Garden House in Solon Springs (about a mile away) had been for sale for awhile. I, Al, immediately responded with a resounding “No, that won’t work!” I wasn’t willing to pivot, I was focused on what was. After seeing the greenhouse buildings and the property, we began to see how, yes, this is almost the exact opposite of what we had our eyes on, but actually this is a much better fit for us. And we truly believe that because this fits us better, that we are actually doing a much better job, providing a much more “us” experience.

Contact Info:

• Website: SolonSpringsAtrium.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the.atrium/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SolonSpringsAtrium

Image Credits
Kellie Rae Studio Samantha Kleven Photography Rachel Elle Photography