Windstorm flattens wheat field dream wedding. WA community rallies to help

Kaitlyn Thompson and Tyler Grant had the perfect wedding this month — just not the wedding they planned, thanks to one of the Tri-Cities fierce fall windstorms.

Blustery gusts destroyed their wedding venue a day before the ceremony, but the couple were blessed, Thompson said.

“It was the craziest experience ever,” she said. “ ... We just realized so much about our friends and family and how amazing and powerful family values are.”

Now people across the nation are reading about the wedding disaster after “People” magazine got wind of it and posted a story online.

Thompson and Grant, both 25, became high school sweethearts 8 1/2 years ago when she was a student at Hanford High in Richland, and he was a student at Kamiakin High.

They and their families spent weeks creating the setting for the couple’s dream wedding in a Kennewick wheat field that’s part of Thompson’s uncle’s farm.

In the shadow of the towering wind turbines, they set up tents with tables and chairs for 250 guests invited by Thompson, a seventh-grade English language arts and leadership teacher at Desert Hills Middle School in Kennewick, and Grant, a project manager at the family business DM Grant Concrete and Construction in Kennewick.

Relatives, including Thompson’s mother and aunt, did the decorating, featuring flowers from Costco.

The highlight was a gazebo fashioned from a grain silo that had stood on a family friend’s ranch in Montana for more than 100 years. It was graciously donated to be made into an altar at the wedding, with its peaked top and metal sides looking right at home in the wheat field.

The week before the wedding, family and friends were comfortably dressed in tank tops and shorts as they helped with set up at the farm.

Thompson and Grant were a little concerned that there might be some rain, but thought it would not be a problem because the tents had sides.

2:30 a.m. call upends wedding plans

With the setup completed, Thompson’s grandmother spent the night there Thursday in her camper to keep an eye on things.

At 2:30 a.m. came the call from her that upended the wedding plans.

She was awakened by the wind roaring across the fields at 60 mph and looked outside to see the tents blown down or away, and decorations crushed.

“Our reaction was to gather as many people as possible, friends and family,” Thompson said. “We made all our phone calls starting at 2:30 in the morning and got all hands on deck just trying to save what we could.”

It was a night of brainstorming until the sun came up, and they could take action for Friday’s rehearsal and Saturday’s wedding.

Grant’s father was at Home Depot when it opened at 6 a.m. to rent a box truck to haul tables and chairs from the wheat field.

At the store, they had a stroke of luck. An employee gave them a list of four different wedding venues to contact.

At 8 a.m. maid of honor Sarah Tweedy started calling the venues, leaving pleading messages and saying she hoped they weren’t booked up for the next day.

Ten minutes later, Sugar Pine Barn in Benton City called to say that in an amazing coincidence they had a rare Saturday without a wedding planned.

Family and friends rallied to help.

“Our village came together,” Thompson said. “We are talking like over 50 people — friends, family, anyone who was around to help offered a helping hand.”

They set about scavenging what they could from the wrecked tents.

“A bunch of the boys went under the massive tents and were just trying to pull out what they could,” Thompson said.

Heavy equipment was needed to clean up the mess made by the windstorm.

Another trip to Costco was made to supplement what flowers could be saved, and then some people stayed up all Friday night arranging flowers, making centerpieces and getting new tablecloths.

Sugar Pine Barn had a wedding Friday night, but Thompson and Grant’s helpers were allowed in at 10 a.m. to start setting up.

Meanwhile, Thomson and Grant had headed out to the wheat field Friday night.

The historic silo, now a gazebo, had withstood the Tri-Cities storm, just as it had many storms in Montana.

Vows at wheat field gazebo

The gazebo was where the couple exchanged their wedding vows “just because of the deep symbolism of how even in strong windstorms, it is our roots that really ground us,” Thompson said.

The next day they took wedding photos at the gazebo with their family and wedding party.

“We knew that we had an amazing support system and family, but to start a marriage off having our loved ones rally like that for us and just be in our corner is absolutely incredible,” Thompson said.

Just when it seemed that nothing else could go wrong, their DJ called at 3:30 p.m. before the wedding to say he could not be there. But he said he would send a substitute.

Thompson and Grant just laughed. What would have been the worst thing to happen at many weddings, just didn’t seem like even a small issue to them.

At their wedding, Thompson said she had never felt more love in a single room.

They’ll have a story to tell future generations, she said.

Thompson told “People” that their wedding was “an absolute whirlwind, but truly a dream.”

“It was truly the most amazing way to start our marriage,” she said.

This story was originally published October 24, 2025 at 11:55 AM.