Vendor Spotlight – 4U Ranch

This stunning ranch wedding venue is located on the Weber River near Park City, Utah.  The owners Donna and Gary bring a lifetime of event experience in business and hospitality to this operation.  Today they have a destination wedding client from Florida at the venue for a fun winter photo shoot.  Our spotlight today is 4U Ranch.

Mike: Hi Donna and Gary, good to be with you today.

Donna: Hi Michael.

Mike: I love the culture and feel of the 4U Ranch every time I’m here.  Tell me about the name 4U and this culture that you’re trying to bring to events.

Donna: Well the 4U came about because in the early 90’s when Gary and I first had the dream of doing a ranch there were four of us.  Our last name is “Urban,” us two and our kids, and so we always new that the brand was going to be that “4U.”  But we also wanted it to have a little bit of a broader meaning, that if we ever indeed got to do this that we wanted to be philanthropic with it, that we wanted it to be “for you.”  We wanted people to feel really comfortable here.

Mike: Ok that’s great.  Sometimes I know the answers to the questions ahead of time but I didn’t this time and I just learned that just now, so that’s great.  This has been a very interesting year for all of us with the pandemic going on and I know we’ve talked a lot about “how can we do events responsibly here at the Ranch?” You have been so proactive to make sure events are done responsibly.  I know you’ve been in a lot of conversations with Summit County health department, tell us about that.  What has been your success this year in keeping things responsible.  

Gary: Summit County has been wonderful to work with, they’re really great people.  They’re trying to help us, they’re trying to help our industry for sure.  We ended up getting very involved, more involved that I thought I was going to get involved, and before long we were involved in a lot of meetings and representing our industry here. So we submitted plans and diagrams and they thanked us for being creative, and they encouraged us to be creative and find ways to do Covid friendly weddings and events.  And they did finally approve us and all of the others and it’s turned out very well.

Mike: Well I’d like to thank you for being so supportive of that because it’s allowed us to do some events but also be responsible and safe.  One final thing, would you show us your ceremony area outside?  It’s one of my favorite places here.

Donna: Sure, we’d love to.  Let’s take a walk.

Donna: Welcome to the ceremony area, right on the riverside out here.  You can see we’ve got a style shoot going on as well, which happens out here fairly often.  We love having that as well as corporate events and weddings.  People love to be by the river out here, that’s what’s so special about it.  We only do one wedding per weekend, so that we just keep the peace out here for everyone.

Mike: Yeah I knew that.

Gary: I want to say some of my favorite things, I mean the weddings have all been beautiful, but my favorite stuff are the things I didn’t see coming – sitting on the porch of the house while the guys before the wedding are having beverages.  And we’ve had couples come back on their anniversaries and fly fish and have meals with us.

Mike: Oh that’s great!

Gary: And so when couples, they want to come back here a year later and just be with us and see the place and be on the river with us and I didn’t expect that at all and that’s been some wonderful memories.

Mike: That’s one thing I should point out is that this is actually your home, you live right there.

Donna: Yes.

Mike: And you have a beautiful venue right in your back yard.

Donna: We do, thank you.

Mike: Thank you so much for joining us today.  Your venue, as always, is beautiful and it’s even more so beautiful with the snow and the river and the shoot in the background.  And thanks for joining our vendor spotlight today.

Donna and Gary: Thank you!

Follow 4U Ranch here: Website, Facebook, Instagram

And of course we’d love to hear from you also, follow Utah Live Bands here: Contact, Facebook, Instagram