The week of August 11 th for Cynthia Basker of Celebrated Events and her team of wedding professionals, in South Bend was a busy one. That Saturday the 18th was the wedding event of the year, at Culver Military Academy as Laura Schrage married Christopher Campbell. Cynthia and her team had been hired to plan, coordinate and execute the one of the largest weddings in her career. Everything was going along as planned, they were even a day ahead on production and decorating the massive 60’ by 160’ tent under which the reception would take place near Lake Maxinkuckee. On Wednesday evening Cynthia left the tent reassured that everything was going to be ready ahead of schedule for Saturday. The Chandeliers had been hung from the tent and the strings of crystal that accented the chandeliers and the tent would be strung by morning. On Thursday the electricians would be there to give the tent power. Thursday and part of Friday would be plenty of time to finish up the little details.

That night at 1:30 Am on Wednesday, Cynthia’s phone rang. On the other end was Tara Cutler from Burns Rent All saying the tent was gone and the guys stringing the crystal strands had run for their lives. What Cynthia was finding out was right then an F3 tornado with winds up to 206 miles per hour had touched down on the Culver Academy grounds and was uprooting trees, damaging buildings and turning her beautifully decorated tent into a wreck and moving it 50 feet from where it had been erected.

By 5 AM Cynthia was back down at Culver Military Academy surveying the damage via car headlights. Getting back down to Culver was an adventure in itself. The Academy isn’t accessible from South Bend by any major highways, you have to take country roads and the storm had done their damage to those too. Trees and branches blocked the road in several places leading to Culver Military Academy making the drive very difficult.

The brand new main tent and two others one for cocktails/lounge and one for the catering team and their silk liners were half laying in the Culver lake. It’s main polls were snapped into pieces and beautiful crystal chandeliers and the crystal strands were small pieces laying scattered across an area larger than a football field.

For most brides and grooms and even some wedding coordinators this would have been a time to regroup and probably change the game plan to make it smaller. A call from the brides mother to Cynthia though decided that the wedding was going forward as planned, meaning Cynthia and her team had 2 days to recreate what they had planned to take a week to complete.

Burns Rent All, began fishing the main tent out of the lake. Luckily the tent and the liner had survived relatively intact with only a few rents in them that could be darned in quick order. The bigger problem was the thousands of pieces of crystal that now littered the reception grounds, which had gone from being beautiful chandeliers to sharp dangerous objects. So as the tent was being recovered and new support polls brought in Cythia and her team from Celebrated Events got down on their hands and knees and began to feel about the grass picking up any crystal shards they found. Even the grooms dad pitched in showing up with tools to help the cleanup.

Once the majority of the shards were collected, they were still finding pieces missed in the major cleanup on Saturday and the tent was erected again on Thursday at noon, it became time for Cynthia and her crew to take inventory of what was available for use and track down replacements. Many of the Chivari chairs were destroyed along with their chair covers that had all be set up prior to the tornado. Adding to the difficulty was the fact this was still prime wedding season and most rental houses have all of the product already on other jobs. The three chandeliers proved especially difficult to replace finally finding replacements from Party Tyme Rentals in Chicago.

Everyone pitched in and arcording to Cynthia “the tent was a beehive of activity with people crawling over the tent” trying to get everything in place for the reception. Her team of professional vendors worked tirelessly till midnight using car headlights to illuminate their work. On Friday they were back at it at the crack of dawn working till midnight again.

On Saturday work progressed right up until the first guests walked into the tent. The band was doing sound checks while the bride walked down the aisle and changes were being made to the little details of the decorations. But even with the reception starting in the main tent, their work was not over. The cocktail tent was scheduled to be turned into a lounge tent by the time dancing started for the guests. It was 3:00 AM Sunday morning when Cynthia walked out to her car and drove away having completed the last required functions of the wedding.

According to Cynthia, “without the tireless contributions of the team of professionals I assembled I could not have pulled this off successfully after the tornado hit.” And successfully pull it off they did. The reception was a resounding hit with the bride & groom, their families and guests.