Cash and Rosie Huntington stand on the edge of the dock at Fairmont’s Flying Goose Campground, where they were married Oct. 8, 2016. Cash, from Blue Earth, grew up soaking in the Western culture – and that is exactly what he and his new bride opted to center their special day on just outside of Faribault County.

Cash Huntington is a man of the Western lifestyle.

And how could he not be, born and raised in rural Southern Minnesota, in the presence of horses from the age of three and traversing the state rodeo scene starting in junior high?

“I’ve been showing and riding horses my whole life,” he says. “My family has been around horses their whole life.”

Huntington, 35, lives in Janesville now, at least temporarily removed from his longtime equine connection. The days of galloping around, venturing to Shakopee’s Canterbury Park horse racing track with his late father, are a relatively distant memory.

But the Blue Earth native, a 2000 graduate of the area high school in town, made sure that his beloved Western influence played a part in the biggest moment of his life to date.

Cash and Rosie Huntington, top right, brought the outdoorsy Western scene to their own wedding last October. Their bridal party, flush with Blue Earth natives and shown top left, got in on the rustic theme as well.

His wedding.

Forget the fancy dance hall or the tuxedo-donning groomsmen. Cash much preferred the sights, the sounds and the smells of the outdoors and the attire to match it all when he and Rosie Deiman were married on Oct. 8, 2016.

With the bridal party breaking out floor-length champagne-colored dresses and combinations of cinch jeans, cowboy boots and vests, the event sure looked the part of Huntington’s ideal scene, something out of rural America. The horse and buggies and the ceremony view from just off Lake Imogene at Fairmont’s Flying Goose Campground did not hurt, either.

“It was more fitting than anything,” Huntington says.

Best of all, the Western-themed wedding plans did not even come directly from him.

“Horses pulled the wedding party after the ceremony, so that was our relaxation period...” — Cash Huntington

“It was more her idea than anything else,” Huntington recalls with a laugh, talking about his new bride. “She got to know my background more and more the more time we spent together.”

That was not always the case, though.

After graduating from Blue Earth Area, heading to school in Austin and ultimately earning a degree from South Central College in Mankato, Huntington met Rosie while working at American Red Cross.

He was an outdoorsy man, raised on rodeos and flatlands. She was from the Cottage Grove area, just south of Saint Paul and miles of metropolitan populations.

But they shared a training space with Red Cross, the humanitarian nonprofit.

“I was in the training department and met her in training classes,” Huntington says.

Little did he know that his preparations for a Red Cross job, through which he now manages around 300 blood drive accounts in Southwestern Minnesota and Iowa, would also serve as training for a relationship.

By October 2015, the duo was a couple. And the two were engaged.

“It was probably December before we really set a date,” Huntington says. “And that was contingent on the site being available.”

Once wedding plans got underway, however, there was little doubt about what kind of event this was going to be. With or without a rural childhood, the old-fashioned cowboy life that so charmed Huntington, Rosie saddled up for the most Western-themed ceremony to pass through Fairmont’s esteemed campground just south of Interstate 90.

Much like when he would fling ropes as a youngster, earnestly trying to snag animals as part of team roping or calf roping rodeo events, Huntington first had to finagle an officiant so that the marriage itself could actually go down.

He found the answer in Aaron Slama, a fellow BEA alumnus who graduated roughly half a decade after Huntington.

“He become ordained specifically for the wedding,” Cash says. “I asked him about four months before I proposed, so that was kind of our deal.”

Slama had worked with Huntington at Red Cross, where the former led classroom instruction. His experience with public speaking is what convinced Huntington that Slama was the man who could bring the vows to life.

“I knew he was good talking in front of people,” Huntington says with a faint chuckle, “so I had no worries prior to it, but some people might have.”

Turns out the wedding went as smoothly as anticipated, and that went for all Huntington’s Blue Earth buddies who showed up as groomsmen locals Dustin Erichsrud, Jake Frey, Adam Wiederhoeft, Andrew Hartman, Pat Shiltz, Jim Grant and Matt Armon, as well as Janesville friend Dylan Kruse.

The scene of the big day, a dock overlooking the lake at the campground, just 20 minutes from hometown Blue Earth, had outdoorsy written all over it, especially with the autumn touch of the October air.

The 225 in attendance, some expecting a grand display of cowboy culture and others not so much, soaked it all in, acknowledging the unofficial hat tip to where and how Huntington was raised.

“Horses pulled the wedding party after the ceremony, so that was our relaxation period before the reception,” Huntington recalls. “Then the reception area, it was decorated with country chic rustic but elegant.”

A Western touch for a man of a Western lifestyle. And one that drew some rave reviews thanks to its visuals, captured by photographer Stacy Haase, another Blue Earth resident “I had some people say it was the most beautiful wedding they’d ever been to,” Huntington recalls.

Most of all, it was the start of the Huntingtons’ journey a shared life that may still lead back to the very Southern Minnesota pastures that shaped Cash’s dream in the first place.

“My mother (Karen) lives in Blue Earth, we have a horse there now,” he says. “And we’re hoping to get back there, to Blue Earth or in the area, maybe start a family, establish some land and have a nice farm there.”

It would be a resounding next chapter for their story one with unashamed Western influence.