When Brittany Rogers-Hanson and her husband, Eric Hanson, moved their family from Las Vegas to Sonoma County in 2008, it became a preference that made a key thing: the requirement to live close to a marriage destination.
Rogers-Hanson was at the time a wedding photographer — a skillset she grew right into a thriving business after her circle of relatives’ arrival in Sonoma County. In 2012, she founded Run Away With Me, a popular wedding planning business based in Windsor that caters to the desires of every type of Wine Country wedding ceremony. Since its founding, the enterprise has been booming for Run Away With Me, Rogers-Hanson stated, with profits almost doubling 12 months after 12 months, and 2017 turned into gearing up as much as her enterprise’s nicest year yet. She ended the 12 months with about $1.5 million in revenue.
Because of that, Rogers-Hanson had excessive expectations for 2018. But then the North Bay wildfires hit. Like many of their Fountaingrove acquaintances, her circle of relatives lost their condominium domestic in the blaze. Her son attended Anova, the Santa Rosa college for college students with autism. The campus was additionally destroyed by the fire. And her lead planner’s home burned down, too. The Hanson circle of relatives estimates they escaped about an hour before the flames hit with a few earrings, their difficult drives, and — she laughs at this element — their reusable water bottles.
“It turned into so silly, but we nevertheless have them,” Rogers-Hanson stated. October is always the busiest month for the Wine Country wedding ceremony commercial enterprise, and October 2017 changed into no exclusive. In the seven days after the firestorm hit, she had four weddings scheduled. Two of the weddings needed to be moved south to different venues in Novato, and one couple chose to cancel their occasion. Just one East Coast couple, who opted for a destination wedding in California Wine Country, were able to have their party as scheduled: at a non-public estate in Dry Creek Valley. The air might have been pleasant, but otherwise, the whole thing went into going properly — till the winery next door caught fire during dinner, Rogers-Hanson said.
“The winemaker comes in, and he’s like, ‘Um,’ ” Rogers-Hanson stated. “And I become like, ‘Oh my gosh, what is that face?’ ” Flames had broken out around the corner, he defined, and crews were on their way to struggle with it. “Part of me becomes like, ‘I’m going to bail, I’ve already been through that,’ ” Rogers-Hanson said. “It becomes much like, ‘Oh my God, come on. Really?’ ” Firefighters quickly tamped the small blaze, and the birthday celebration became largely unaffected. On top of that, Run Away With Me’s cellphone began ringing across the clock, with out-of-state customers in a panic approximately how their wedding ceremony would fare in the face of one of the maximum damaging fires in the state’s history.
“It became loopy,” Rogers-Hanson said. “I’m riding around FaceTiming clients — like, driving down Dry Creek, FaceTiming and trying to show them, ‘Look, see, you can see there’s no smoke.’ I needed to move everywhere and take videos, and show them. … It changed into just a mad sprint.”
The business has been gradually rebuilding. In 2018, revenue turned down to $1 million, $500,000 off from the year-earlier than, and Run Away With Me has been running tough to overcome that slide. Rogers-Hanson now calls for clients to purchase wedding ceremony coverage as part of their contract. Large wedding events are booked less often due to the risk worries, and questions from ability customers approximately wildfires come regularly in recent times. Before 2017, that never befell.
“Wine Country changed into like, ideal,” she said. “It is no way got here up. I in no way had a single query of, ‘Do you mean revel in fires, or is there anything we need to worry about?’ Before booking off-season weddings, it turned into like, ‘Oh, it may rain.’ Now it’s a total one-of-a-kind communique.”
Figures from the Wedding Report, an Arizona-primarily based marketplace studies business, display that Run Away With Me’s experience wasn’t accurate. Annual wedding ceremony-associated income in 2016 and 2017 in Sonoma County hovered around $one hundred fifteen million. In 2018, that variety dropped to $110 million. The Wedding Report’s 2019 projection estimates it will be about the same as 2018. Rogers-Hanson said her enterprise is still approximately 20% to 30% off pace from where it was at this point in 2017. Still, she hopes for a rebound.
