We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Joe & Mona Elliott a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Joe & Mona, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today How did you come up with the idea for your business?

The idea for Wild Roots was born in the middle of covid. For years, our house had always been the hub of activity with family and friends. Creating environments where people felt at home, could connect and develop deeper relationships had always been part of our passion. When our oldest daughter, 19 at the time, got engaged during this period, we listened as she envisioned a wedding that was more of a fun gathering with all her favorites.

We searched all over Texas to find an affordable, woodsy venue with accommodations but had no luck. The few that did exist were way out of our price range. We ended up finding a venue in the Tennessee mountains that checked all the boxes. Those who attended said it was by far the best wedding they had ever been to..

In 2021, we purchased a 45 acre property in Lockhart, Texas and began breaking ground on what we wanted to be the ultimate, affordable, gathering place for any occasion.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

One of the many great characteristics of Gen Z is that they value relationships. Being with the people they love and trust is one of the most important values they hold close. When it comes to paying for a wedding; however, they are facing many challenges. The costs of vendor services has significantly risen since the pandemic, as well as, the cost of housing, loans, interest rates and more. Compounding the issue is the reality that parents are not chipping in to pay for weddings like they did for previous generations. It is tougher than ever to pull off a beautiful wedding without feeling like you have to go into debt or sacrifice your savings that was intended to go toward your first home.

Wild Roots exists to bring couples a wedding experience that does not have to break the bank and that speaks to everything they value most. From our unique tiny home and glamping accommodations, to our beautiful forrest vibe and super fun amenities such as sand volleyball, pickleball, basketball and more, couples can have the perfect gathering spot for their celebration starting at less than $5,000.

One of the largest expenses for a wedding is all the required food and drink packages most corporate run venues make you purchase. The mark ups are insane! At Wild Roots, we were able to save our couples between $5k to $7k on the overall cost of their wedding simply by offering them the flexibility to bring in their own vendors.

As a family owned business, we have loved being able to adopt the couples that get married here and help them pull off the perfect event without the normal financial stresses.

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

Since we had never been in the wedding industry before, Mona and I had to try and learn as much as we could as fast as we could. Growing our clientele started with a commitment to really understand twenty somethings today. Aside from listening to hundreds of podcast episodes from venue owners in our industry, our most effective strategy has always been to consistently ask our couples questions. It seems obvious but how many times as business owners do we make assumptions about what our customers want that may not be supported by data? Gut instincts are important, but they need to backed by what the market is really saying.

Can you open up about a time when you had a really close call with the business?

When we first purchased the property, it was raw land with no utilities. The downside of never having tackled a buildout at this scale is you don’t know what you don’t know. Going into the project we had a firm budget in place but as we started, we realized how hard it really is to find good contractors capable of projecting accurate costs! Initial quotes and timelines werw almost never correct. We learned that every time we get a bid, add 20% and double whatever timeframe they give you.

Being way over our initial budget led us to a place of being 3 months away from pulling the plug and just selling. We had more debt than we could handle and no certainty that what we were building would even meet the demand. The wedding business is particularly tough because you only receive a portion upfront with the remainder another year or more away from hitting the books. We had no idea what to value our venue at or how many booking to expect. When we finally began to market the venue in April of 2024, we said we would give it 3 months and see if we could bring in enough business to keep us from bleeding out what little cash we had left.

The bookings began to trickle in just enough to buy us another 3 months.. By the time wedding booking season kicked into gear in December of that year, our pipeline of prospective couples had doubled. By January of 2025, we had our first month in the green and the next several months continued to get better. Getting off the ground was scary, but our commitment to listening to the couples that were coming continued to give us confidence and direction.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.wildrootslockhart.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wildroots.tx
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@wildroots.lockhart
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@wildrootslockhart

Image Credits

Faith Elliott Photography
www.faithelliottphotography.com