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Hi everyone! My name is Rachel, and I am the new Lead Planner for All of the Above Weddings + Events! I am so excited to be joining Alex’s team for the 2026 season – and for many seasons to come!
I wanted to create a blog to introduce myself, and give a little back story of how I became interested in being a wedding planner.
Who is Rachel Lien?
I’ll give just a short introduction about myself, before diving in to my wedding planning history!
I am what you would call a serial-hobbyist – I love to sew, try new recipes with my sourdough starter, thrifting is my absolute favorite thing to do, I dabble in crocheting and knitting is on my list of things to learn… the list goes on. I’m constantly challenging myself to learn new things!
I even have my own craft business, Ditch Lilies Village, so go check it out if you’d like 🙂
I considered myself to be a creative person, and so I’ve always dreamed of having a job that allowed me to use my creative skills. I wanted a job that I actually enjoyed!
How I got in the Wedding Industry
Ever since I was little, I’ve been a planner! I still have notebooks and journals filled with my ideas and plans for friends birthday parties, packing lists and itineraries for family trips, and even steps to take for convincing my parents to buy me a guinea pig (yes, I literally listed out reasons that I am ready for a guinea pig, a list of materials we would need to buy, and a feeding schedule. I was 8 years old.) And did I convince them? Let’s just say, I got my guinea pig! So, planning has always been a part of my life – but I never considering making it a full-time gig until a few years ago!
I grew up in Rogers, MN, where I met my husband, Max, during our senior year of high school. He ended up joining the military right after graduation, and got stationed in Colorado Springs at Fort Carson. So naturally I followed him to the mountains!
Colorado is where I found the love for wedding planning. I met one of my best friends, Lauren, while living in Colorado. She is the one who ultimately got my into wedding planning! I have to give a huge shout out to her, because my life would be so different if I hadn’t met her. Love you Lauren 🤍
I started helping Lauren set up for a wedding one day (she was the venue manager and coordinator for a ranch-style wedding venue at the time). I helped with setting up tables, sweeping the floors, setting up the tent, etc. All the venue-type duties! Lauren and her friend, Mariah, eventually started their own wedding planning business (that I naturally got dragged into helping with too!), and THIS is where I fell in love with wedding planning!
Full Bloom Events
Full Bloom Events is the planning business that Mariah and Lauren started. This company will forever hold a special place in my heart! If I never moved back to Minnesota, I would 100% still be working with these lovely ladies. I miss my team so much! If you haven’t heard of Full Bloom Events, you have to give them a look!
Okay, now that I’ve stopped crying, let’s get back to the story 😅 I was an assistant coordinator for Full Bloom Events for one amazing, and too-short season in 2024! This team genuinely was such an amazing team. It was just us three girlies against the world!
My job was to decorate tables, make sure everything was set before guests arrived, and occasionally release the wedding party down the aisle. It really depended on what Mariah needed me to do! She is the mastermind, and none of what we did could go smoothly without her expertise planning skills. I hope to be as good as her one day 🤍
I am truly blessed to have worked for Lauren and Mariah. They taught me so much about the coordination side of the wedding industry. Plus, all the mountain venues were so beautiful, how can you not be happy at work!
By the end of the very first wedding I did with them, something clicked – I knew I was going to be a part of wedding planning somehow in the future!
Thumper Pond Resort
A few months before moving back to Minnesota, I was a little stressed about finding a similar job to what I was doing at Full Bloom Events. I wanted to remain in the wedding industry, but wasn’t really finding much around the Ottertail, MN area in that field (at least, not at that time!) My mother-in-law was the one to find a post that Thumper Pond Resort was hiring for their banquet staff. That was at least in the realm of wedding industry, so I went ahead and applied! Little did I know, I would be come the Banquet Manager there in January of 2025!
Being the Banquet Manager was a HUGE step for me – I now had an entire staff team to run, I was in charge of reaching out and getting details from people, and I was the main point of contact for all venue-related things! It was a lot to take in and to learn, but I loved it!
Thumper Pond gave me the opportunity to have experience in not only being the main planner for events, but also the knowledge of how a venue actually runs. Now I know the questions to ask other venues when getting quotes for my couples! I am truly grateful for my time at Thumper Pond – I will carry what I have learned with me for my future events!
Although I loved the company and the people I worked with, it wasn’t what I wanted to do forever – Thumper Pond does host weddings, but they also host a lot of corporate events, birthday parties, Proms, etc. Wedding Planning is what I knew I wanted to do for my career, and I was only getting a taste of that at Thumper Pond. That is why I decided to poke around and see if there were any wedding planning teams I could join, and sure enough that is where I found All of the Above Weddings + Events!
Joining the All of the Above Team!
I had found All of the Above Weddings + Events just by searching ‘wedding coordination near Ottertail, MN’ on google! I clicked on the website, and immediately loved the vibes. There wasn’t any place that said that they were hiring, but I thought I’d reach out anyways just in case! I am really glad that I did 🙂
I met up with Alex Rupe, the owner of All of the Above, some time in October of 2025 just to chat and see if we aligned, and we hit it off right away! It is so funny because she had said that I had messaged her at the perfect time – she was getting ready to step back from wedding planning, and focus on other business ventures, while I am ready to jump in full swing! So it just seemed to work out from the very start.
I was still working at Thumper Pond at the time, and wanted to finish out the year with them, so I officially joined the All of the Above team in December, 2025. I am beyond excited to learn more from Alex (the expert planner!), and see where All of the Above Weddings + Events takes me! Words can’t even describe how excited I am that I found this place, and that I am able to do what I love for the rest of my life 🤍
Cheers to the 2026 season!
Much love,
Rachel with All of the Above Weddings + Events
Vendor Team
Photographer: Karli Marie Photography
Location: You Beauty Boutique & Spa
Hi everyone! My name is Rachel, and I am the new Lead Planner for All of the Above Weddings + Events! I am so excited to be joining Alex’s team for the 2026 season – and for many seasons to come!
I wanted to create a blog to introduce myself, and give a little back story of how I became interested in being a wedding planner.
Who is Rachel Lien?
I’ll give just a short introduction about myself, before diving in to my wedding planning history!
I am what you would call a serial-hobbyist – I love to sew, try new recipes with my sourdough starter, thrifting is my absolute favorite thing to do, I dabble in crocheting and knitting is on my list of things to learn… the list goes on. I’m constantly challenging myself to learn new things!
I even have my own craft business, Ditch Lilies Village, so go check it out if you’d like 🙂
I considered myself to be a creative person, and so I’ve always dreamed of having a job that allowed me to use my creative skills. I wanted a job that I actually enjoyed!
How I got in the Wedding Industry
Ever since I was little, I’ve been a planner! I still have notebooks and journals filled with my ideas and plans for friends birthday parties, packing lists and itineraries for family trips, and even steps to take for convincing my parents to buy me a guinea pig (yes, I literally listed out reasons that I am ready for a guinea pig, a list of materials we would need to buy, and a feeding schedule. I was 8 years old.) And did I convince them? Let’s just say, I got my guinea pig! So, planning has always been a part of my life – but I never considering making it a full-time gig until a few years ago!
I grew up in Rogers, MN, where I met my husband, Max, during our senior year of high school. He ended up joining the military right after graduation, and got stationed in Colorado Springs at Fort Carson. So naturally I followed him to the mountains!
Colorado is where I found the love for wedding planning. I met one of my best friends, Lauren, while living in Colorado. She is the one who ultimately got my into wedding planning! I have to give a huge shout out to her, because my life would be so different if I hadn’t met her. Love you Lauren 🤍
I started helping Lauren set up for a wedding one day (she was the venue manager and coordinator for a ranch-style wedding venue at the time). I helped with setting up tables, sweeping the floors, setting up the tent, etc. All the venue-type duties! Lauren and her friend, Mariah, eventually started their own wedding planning business (that I naturally got dragged into helping with too!), and THIS is where I fell in love with wedding planning!
Full Bloom Events
Full Bloom Events is the planning business that Mariah and Lauren started. This company will forever hold a special place in my heart! If I never moved back to Minnesota, I would 100% still be working with these lovely ladies. I miss my team so much! If you haven’t heard of Full Bloom Events, you have to give them a look!
Okay, now that I’ve stopped crying, let’s get back to the story 😅 I was an assistant coordinator for Full Bloom Events for one amazing, and too-short season in 2024! This team genuinely was such an amazing team. It was just us three girlies against the world!
My job was to decorate tables, make sure everything was set before guests arrived, and occasionally release the wedding party down the aisle. It really depended on what Mariah needed me to do! She is the mastermind, and none of what we did could go smoothly without her expertise planning skills. I hope to be as good as her one day 🤍
I am truly blessed to have worked for Lauren and Mariah. They taught me so much about the coordination side of the wedding industry. Plus, all the mountain venues were so beautiful, how can you not be happy at work!
By the end of the very first wedding I did with them, something clicked – I knew I was going to be a part of wedding planning somehow in the future!
Thumper Pond Resort
A few months before moving back to Minnesota, I was a little stressed about finding a similar job to what I was doing at Full Bloom Events. I wanted to remain in the wedding industry, but wasn’t really finding much around the Ottertail, MN area in that field (at least, not at that time!) My mother-in-law was the one to find a post that Thumper Pond Resort was hiring for their banquet staff. That was at least in the realm of wedding industry, so I went ahead and applied! Little did I know, I would be come the Banquet Manager there in January of 2025!
Being the Banquet Manager was a HUGE step for me – I now had an entire staff team to run, I was in charge of reaching out and getting details from people, and I was the main point of contact for all venue-related things! It was a lot to take in and to learn, but I loved it!
Thumper Pond gave me the opportunity to have experience in not only being the main planner for events, but also the knowledge of how a venue actually runs. Now I know the questions to ask other venues when getting quotes for my couples! I am truly grateful for my time at Thumper Pond – I will carry what I have learned with me for my future events!
Although I loved the company and the people I worked with, it wasn’t what I wanted to do forever – Thumper Pond does host weddings, but they also host a lot of corporate events, birthday parties, Proms, etc. Wedding Planning is what I knew I wanted to do for my career, and I was only getting a taste of that at Thumper Pond. That is why I decided to poke around and see if there were any wedding planning teams I could join, and sure enough that is where I found All of the Above Weddings + Events!
Joining the All of the Above Team!
I had found All of the Above Weddings + Events just by searching ‘wedding coordination near Ottertail, MN’ on google! I clicked on the website, and immediately loved the vibes. There wasn’t any place that said that they were hiring, but I thought I’d reach out anyways just in case! I am really glad that I did 🙂
I met up with Alex Rupe, the owner of All of the Above, some time in October of 2025 just to chat and see if we aligned, and we hit it off right away! It is so funny because she had said that I had messaged her at the perfect time – she was getting ready to step back from wedding planning, and focus on other business ventures, while I am ready to jump in full swing! So it just seemed to work out from the very start.
I was still working at Thumper Pond at the time, and wanted to finish out the year with them, so I officially joined the All of the Above team in December, 2025. I am beyond excited to learn more from Alex (the expert planner!), and see where All of the Above Weddings + Events takes me! Words can’t even describe how excited I am that I found this place, and that I am able to do what I love for the rest of my life 🤍
Cheers to the 2026 season!
Much love,
Rachel with All of the Above Weddings + Events
Vendor Team
Photographer: Karli Marie Photography
Location: You Beauty Boutique & Spa
