
Kellie Lamontagne rented a garden plot last April, intending to grow some of her own tomatoes, corn and a few other crops.
Little did she know that, besides a passion for gardening, she would find love at the Horn Farm in Hellam Township.
"I certainly wasn't looking," the 34-year-old said. "I never would've thought I would find love in the garden."
Instead, the massage therapist from Hellam Township said she really just wanted to try her green thumb at her first garden. So she signed up for a plot the last day before the deadline.
And just across from her new plot was another gardener, Jake Coder, 30, who caught her eye -- "with the greatest smile that goes right up to his eyes."
With just a grassy driveway between them, Lamontagne said she gave him her number so that he could keep an eye on her plants. At one point, he was forced to tell her about a tomato blight -- "that's when we really started talking," she said.
"She kept telling me she found love in the garden," said longtime friend Michelle Wolfe.
And after the harvest, Coder proposed on Thanksgiving.
A change of plans: While things had run smoothly for the couple in fair weather, winter would complicate their wedding plans.
They planned to marry on Sunday -- their first Valentine's Day together -- but they didn't expect two large winter storms, each dumping more than 20 inches of snow.
Lamontagne's mother, Nancy Lamontagne, who lives in North Carolina, said she was supposed to come to York last Wednesday, but her daughter told her to leave a day earlier, so she arrived just when the first flakes began to fall.
The couple was supposed to marry at the farmhouse on the Horn Farm. But with a dress, cake, flowers and all of the other details, the couple hadn't expected to add plowing to the pre-wedding to-do list.
"Oh, my goodness -- we're not going to have a place," Kellie Lamontagne recalled thinking.
A new venue: The couple then hoped to have a small ceremony at the rehearsal site -- the Roosevelt Tavern in York City. But the restaurant's owner, Toni Schimmel, had to turn them down because another party had been scheduled right before their rehearsal dinner.
Luckily for the couple, Schimmel "remembered I have an upstairs," meaning her own apartment above the restaurant.
And while Schimmel's apartment might not have offered the sentimental value of the place where the couple met, at least the 400 block of Philadelphia Street had been plowed. And the venue was not too shabby either. Schimmel's home has been featured in Spaces magazine.
"(It was) just something I felt really drawn to do," Schimmel said. "I just feel like they're my friends."
A happy ending: So the wedding was held at 6 p.m. Sunday with Kellie Lamontagne walking down Schimmel's leopard print carpeted steps. West York Mayor Sam Firestone, who married the couple, took his place at the bottom of the stairs facing about two dozen family and friends surrounding Schimmel's leather sofa and TV.
Kellie Lamontagne's 9-year-old son, Logan, stood between his mother and new stepfather before giving her away. And as the couple recited their vows, the two exchanged quick smiles.
"Right when I met her, I knew she was the one," said Coder, who works for an engineering firm in Red Lion. He recalled that he noticed her "the first day I was there."
The two will stay few days at an area Wingate hotel, with a honeymoon to either Maine or North Carolina in the spring, Kellie Lamontagne said.
And while the bride said she had yet to get a Valentine's gift from her new husband, she said he had a surprise planned. She suspected seeds.
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