T
h e Wedding Issue
A RUSTIC WEDDING WITH
AN AUTUMN SUNSET
Montgomery Farms in Scottsburg has turned a 150-year-old farm and barn into a
wedding site in the middle of nature. Sunsets are preferred. Rainbows cost extra.
BY STEVE KAUFMAN | PHOTO BY TRINA WHALIN
Imagine a 10-year-old girl and boy who first
met in the pumpkin patch at Montgomery Farms
playing hide and seek in the corn maze. And now,
12 years later, they’re getting married on the
grounds of the same Scottsburg farm.
The pumpkin patch and the corn maze are gone
now. So are the hayride, the straw jump and the
bonfires. But the 40-acre farm with the 150-year-old
cattle barn has been turned into one of the most
popular wedding venues in Southern Indiana.
And, said Mandi Bieda, one of the owners, it’s
true that some of her clients first met at the farm.
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In 1999, when she and her brother, Dallas
Robert Montgomery, first turned the old working
farm into what’s called “agri-entertainment” – the
hayrides, pumpkins, farm store, etc. – they were
getting 20,000 to 30,000 people coming out on
fall weekends.
“People looked around our great landscape
and asked if it would ever be possible to hold a
wedding here,” said Mandi. “It turned out, my
brother and I thought it was a great idea, too.” So,
apparently, did everyone else. The minute Mandi
and Dallas Robert decided to turn the farm into
a wedding venue, the phone started ringing.
By the way, Dallas Robert gets the full moniker
treatment because he’s the third generation of
Dallas Montgomerys. Grandfather Dallas Donald
Montgomery bought the land 70 years ago as a
full working farm. But while his sons, Dallas Earl
Montgomery and Gary Montgomery, worked the
farm, they eventually went off to get engineering
degrees and pursue their own professions.
Mandi and Dallas Robert grew up on the farm, at
one point running a little sweet corn stand across
the street. It was they who had turned the property
into a weekend attraction, starting in 1999, and
it was they who had decided to close it down.