Some love stories begin with a proposal, but ours began decades earlier. The butterfly effect carried us here — because long before we imagined saying “I do” on the shores of French Lake, before we were even born, our story started with two teenagers and a lakeside.
Being 11 years old was a BIG year for me, my connection to this land started when I was eleven years old, as did mine and Dalton’s love story.
My grandmother, Laura Smith, has always been an entrepreneur at heart. After building and selling a successful daycare business to my mom, she wasn’t ready to slow down. She needed something meaningful, something that would challenge her, inspire her, and keep her building.
But their story doesn't start there. In the late 1960s, my grandparents were high school sweethearts. My grandmother lived in military housing, and my grandfather lived across the lake. One summer, he paddled his canoe to the abandoned park across the lake each day while she biked from the PMQs so they could spend their summer together.
Years later, that abandoned lakeside property began operating as a private campground — and years after that, my grandparents were given the opportunity to take it over.
I remember the night my grandmother told our family. We were gathered in my grandparents’ living room after supper, and while the adults discussed logistics and risk, I was bursting with excitement for a much more selfish reason:
I imagined scooping ice cream, selling penny candy, and spending summers by the lake — all while getting paid.
I prayed they would get it.
They did.
And at twelve years old, I got my first job at the campground.
They poured life back into the park — adding sites, restoring buildings, welcoming campers, and creating a place that felt alive again. I spent every summer there, proud of my “movie-worthy” first job and deeply attached to the land that shaped my childhood.
As I grew older, I still spent every summer working at the campground until life took me far from home. After university, I moved abroad. My career evolved from teaching to restoring hurricane-damaged boats and documenting the process on YouTube, which led me into the yachting world and eventually into luxury tourism and charter yacht experiences in the Caribbean.
It was there I discovered what truly lit me up: creating meaningful, personalized experiences and planning beautiful, unforgettable moments for people.
In 2023, I began hearing whispers that my grandparents were ready to retire.
The thought of losing the park from our family felt unbearable — but I also knew they could not continue managing the physical demands and responsibilities alone.
I called my long-distance boyfriend, Dalton, and pitched a wild idea: what if we took it over?
He didn’t hesitate.
That summer, I quit my job, I returned to New Brunswick, and we began learning the ropes and preparing for the transition.
As I mentioned, Dalton and I actually met when I was in Grade 6, the year my grandparents took over the campground, he was my very first crush. We grew up in the same orbit, and while life took him across the country with his dad and later into the military, we stayed loosely connected and would reconnect at different points over the years. What makes everyone laugh now is that when I was a kid playing house with my friends, I always insisted Dalton was my husband. There was just something about him — steady, kind, quietly strong — that made eleven-year-old me absolutely certain. We didn’t officially become a couple until we were twenty-four, but in a way that feels hard to explain, I think I knew long before then that he was the one.
In 2024, Dalton proposed on a beach in the Dominican Republic, surrounded by our closest family and friends. It felt like everything in my life was finally aligning.
Then I started planning our wedding — and quickly realized what I envisioned didn’t exist locally.
I wanted an outdoor wedding inspired by nature. I wanted something elegant yet relaxed, timeless but unpretentious. I didn’t want barn boards and hay bales, but I also didn’t want something so formal it felt impersonal.
I wanted something that felt like home.
Planning without a traditional venue meant sourcing every detail myself — catering, décor, rentals, beauty services, entertainment, media — and it quickly became overwhelming. As the oldest daughter and cousin in my family, I didn’t have someone ahead of me to guide the process.
What should have been joyful felt stressful.
Dalton and I considered a backyard wedding. Then one day, while visiting the campground, my father-in-law said, “If I were you, I’d just get married here. It’s perfect.”
Everything clicked.
The park offered everything we wanted: water, nature, meaning, privacy, and the place where generations of my family had gathered.
And in that moment, the vision for The Meadows was born — a wedding experience designed to give other brides what I had wished for: guidance, trusted vendors, thoughtful planning, and a setting that feels effortless and deeply personal.
By the time our wedding day arrived on September 27, it felt magical — but it also confirmed one of the pillars of our business: weddings should feel joyful and seamless, not overwhelming.
Our celebration was inspired by an English countryside garden party — romantic, timeless, and natural. We blended summer and autumn tones with lake blues, soft lilacs, deep raspberry hues, and warm rust accents. Texture played a central role, with chiffon, stone, wood, and satin creating depth and elegance.
Because I couldn’t find what I envisioned locally, many elements were custom built by Dalton and our family — including long harvest tables, benches, and a classic white telephone booth used as a Photo Booth and a house or audio guest book, which I highly recommend using on your wedding day! Listening to the recordings the day after the wedding was hilarious and sentimental and one of the best parts of the whole experience.
We worked with local vendors and entrepreneurs, including a florist who grows seasonal blooms here in New Brunswick and a hometown caterer who served me one of my favourite meals of all time: seafood pasta with scallops and salmon!
The morning of the wedding was slow, cozy, and filled with laughter as my bridal party and my mom gathered to get ready. One of my childhood best friends was our photographer and she spent the morning with me and my girls, capturing such personal shots. I felt relatively calm until my brother arrived in his suit, after helping us build and prepare everything well into the evenings for the last month, and brought the first tears of the day.
Our ceremony took place on the beach, where my parents walked me down the aisle toward Dalton — who, despite our rehearsal, wouldn’t turn around when I reached the “turnaround point” of the aisle. When he finally did, after being nudged by his brother and our wedding day coordinator, his tear-filled face and overwhelming emotion became the best moment of my life. It was my romance movie moment that every girl waits their whole life for. The rest of our ceremony was perfect. And if I can recommend anything, practice your dips because they made for some of the best photos of the entire day!
Cocktail hour unfolded in our renovated gazebo, complete with a 16’ charcuterie spread, signature cocktails, lawn games, and a live artist sketching guests. While we took photos, our loved ones soaked in the atmosphere we had dreamed about creating.
Dinner flowed into speeches, laughter, and games, and then came one of the greatest surprises of the night. While we were playing the shoe game, I was strategically sat facing the opposite direction. Behind me, my videographer, my maid of honour, and my mom and stepdad quietly set up a large screen and projector. When the game ended and I turned around, a video began to play — a montage of Dalton and me from the day we were born to the day of our wedding. They had spent days gathering photos, video clips, and memories from the people who love us most. As we watched, the entire room fell into that soft, emotional hush that only comes when something truly meaningful is happening. We laughed, we cried, and I remember thinking how incredible it felt to be loved so deeply that someone would create something that special just for us.
Soon after came our first dance. Having been a dancer most of my life, I couldn’t quite bring myself to simply sway in a circle for two and a half minutes. For nearly a year, I had been teaching Dalton choreography, to make the moment feel a little more special. The night before the wedding, as we worked late into the night finishing final touches around the park with headlamps on, we realized we hadn’t practised in days, so we ran through the moves one last time under the glow of work lights and nervous laughter. On the day of, when the music began, neither of us followed the choreography exactly. Instead, we let the rhythm guide us, trusting the counts we knew and each other’s timing. We moved through the dance naturally, adding our practiced turns and lifts when they felt right rather than when they were planned. As we danced, I was surrounded by pieces built by Dalton and our families — even the checkerboard dance floor beneath our feet had been built and repainted to perfection. It felt less like a performance and more like a reflection of our entire journey: imperfectly perfect, heartfelt, and completely our own.
After the formalities, the night opened up into something unforgettable. Our DJ somehow struck the perfect balance between professional and personal. it felt less like we had hired entertainment and more like a lifelong friend had taken over the music and knew exactly what everyone needed to hear. The dance floor filled instantly and stayed full for hours. We laughed, shouted lyrics, spun in circles, and celebrated with the kind of carefree joy you rarely get to experience as an adult.
Freddy Photo Booth was set up on the stage and quickly became its own source of chaos and fun. By the end of the night, more than 3,000 photos had been taken, capturing everything from elegant poses to wildly unfiltered moments. Everywhere I looked, people were laughing, celebrating, and completely letting loose.
It was, without exaggeration, one of the greatest parties of my life. The kind of night where you lose track of time, where every song feels like your favourite, where your feet ache and your cheeks hurt from smiling, and where you wish you could bottle the feeling and relive it forever. Watching our families and friends — people from every chapter of our lives — dancing together under the lights was surreal and deeply emotional.
That joy, that freedom, that sense of celebration without restraint… It's exactly what we hope every couple experiences here.
The evening ended by the water, as the few of us still awake gathered around a glowing beach bonfire, sharing stories, music, and warmth beneath the stars. The night drifted into a dreamy haze, and when we woke the next morning, our wedding had gently slipped into memory.
Just weeks later, on November 15 2025, we launched The Meadows — built on the legacy of my grandparents, the love that began on this shoreline decades ago, and a vision born from both experience and longing.
We were married on this land while building something new upon it.
And now, its story continues through every couple who chooses to begin their own here.
