A wedding venue struggling under the heavy COVID-19 restrictions may not have been able to celebrate love with couples this past summer as they wanted, but they were able to help fabricate it.

In a time where holding large events is prohibited by law, Evergreen Village Owner Pete Schellenberg says the wedding industry is a bad business to be in. For that very reason, he was happy to open his facility to a Hallmark film crew late August. The result, a love story entitled 'Sweet Autumn', premiered just this past weekend.

“The experience was a little overwhelming,” says Schellenberg of his time with the production team. “I didn’t initially realize what was going to happen. They took over every square inch of the place and I guess I just hadn’t expected them to literally move in.”

Schellenberg says one of the scenes filmed on his property was a fall carnival (photo supplied).Schellenberg, who typically spends a lot of time doing maintenance on-site, says he was out of work for just over a week as movie screens, cameras, and people occupied nearly every available space and building on his yard. “That was the part I didn’t like,” he offers, noting it was both mesmerizing and unnerving to watch professional crews shift and transform his property into a spotless movie set. He says any damage they caused in the process he was reimbursed for without question.

At its essence, Sweet Autumn is a movie about a hand-me-down candy shop and a love story between the two very different individuals who inherit it. The two protagonists, a young entrepreneur named Maggie and a maple farmer named Dex, are played by Nikki DeLoach and Andrew Walker, respectively. DeLoach may best be recognized for her appearances on shows like ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ and ‘Days of Our Lives’ while Walker is better known for gigs in action movies like ‘The Gundown’ and ‘Steel Toes’.

During the shoot, Schellenberg says he visited the set every day to answer questions but, for the most part, he just observed. The film crew, he notes, were obviously conscious of COVID-19 and were wearing masks and physical distancing where they could. “The leading stars got a little bit of special treatment,” he adds. “You definitely had to keep a safe distance away from them.”

Schellenberg says he was unable to work on his property while film crews were using his yard as a set (photo supplied).For Schellenberg, the most intriguing part of the endeavor was the speed at which everything moved.

“To see the amount of equipment and energy and time and manpower that went into putting everything together, I mean you'd expect that, but to see it first-hand up close was quite interesting.”

While it was at times vulnerable to have so many strangers running amok in and around his venue, he was, in the end, glad to have people using his space again.

“It was awesome to make something out of a pretty rough year,” he offers. “It doesn’t bring in a pile of money, but it is free money without you really needing to do anything.”

Schellenberg calls the 2020 wedding season a “pretty big loss” and notes he hosted less than five big white weddings during a period where he would have had 65. All things considered, he dubs his brief stint in show business as a fairly positive experience and says he would consider doing it again.

Sweet Autumn is a Hallmark Channel original and can be viewed only by individuals with a proper subscription.