We weren't looking to get married in a church, but the farm we're renting has an old chapel sitting on the grounds and it's a neat little space so we've decided to do the ceremony there instead of outside.

The chapel didn't originate on the farm. It has an interesting history, as depicted in numerous newspaper clippings and pictures which all hang in the back room behind the alter.

There's also an official transcript from the story on the chapel that ran on Paul Harvey News which reads as follows:

"Excerpt from Paul Harvey News… October 11, 1996

"A longtime Apple River, Illinois farmer so loved his land… that he always said he wanted to be buried on his land. He wanted forever to be a part of it. But when he died last summer and his widow set about to fulfill his wish… She was told that human remains may be entombed only in a licensed cemetery… or in a churchyard.

"She buried him in a cemetery but she continued grieving. Until the other day she heard that a church was bankrupt and abandoned… The farmer’s wife bought the church… Hired a semi to load and move the church with its steeple reaching 60 feet into the sky… Power company linemen lowered power lines to allow it to pass... And the church was trucked to the farm… And at a cost of seventy thousand dollars to buy the church and have it moved…

"The Apple Valley farmer has come home. Dug up from the impersonal pay-as-you-go place and buried where he wanted to be on his own farm… BUT IN A CHURCH YARD!"

The farmer's daughter runs the farm now. The story she tells about the little chapel doesn't line up with Paul Harvey's version 100%. The restrictions on where the father could be buried sound a little exaggerated, and the church itself was available not because the congregation had gone bankrupt but simply because they'd built a new church and didn't need the old one. Still, it's a nice story and a beautiful little chapel.

The farmer was the first person buried next to the newly located chapel (there are a few more tombstones out there now), and the daughter who runs the place was the first person married there.

And now you... more or less... know the rest of the story. GOOD DAY!