With their company, Northern Michigan entrepreneurs Gina Stegehuis, Amber Kilgore, and Yarrow Young aim to be the Midwest’s hub for fantasy events
For moms Gina Stegehuis, Amber Kilgore, and Yarrow Young, working a traditional 9-5 came at a cost: time with their young children. Running their own business allows them to pursue their passions with the key perk of having the flexibility to support their families. Last year, the three best friends launched Rain & Revelry, a fantasy events company. Rain & Revelry plans and executes elaborate, fantasy-themed parties. The Starfall Ball, a fairy-themed event that will be hosted at Castle Farms in Charlevoix in 2025, includes a scavenger hunt in Petoskey, a market, and the black-tie Starfall Ball.
The three best friends have a deep love of the fantasy genre and were seeing events popping up around the country that tapped into that magic—but none in the Midwest. They looked at each other and thought, “We can do that! We can host events like that. We’re a team of dreamers,” says Yarrow.
Twin sisters Yarrow and Amber began their journey as entrepreneurs with Tootsie Bluffins, which offers custom specialty cakes and dessert bars, including gluten-free, dairy-free, nut-free, and vegan options. Gina partnered with them to launch Rain & Revelry.
Yarrow, Amber, and Gina joined 20Fathoms and New Mexico Community Capital for the Indigenous Business and Marketing Essentials Bootcamp. 20Fathoms spoke to the intrepid entrepreneurs to learn more about their startup journey and experience in the bootcamp.
The following interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
20Fathoms: What have been the biggest challenges you have faced as startup founders?
Gina: For me personally it’s the legalese of everything; it feels overwhelming – how do you register for an LLC, how do you find a good accountant?
The event planning I know and love, but the back end intimidates me.
Yarrow: Thankfully by Rain & Revelry, we’d been able to work out a lot of kinks. It’s hard as a business owner to know the resources available to you. Startups can be intimidating, making sure you are checking the boxes. There’s no one person to ask; you’re pulling from all these different spots.
Aside from that – also just finding the courage! It can be scary to jump off and take your dreams and make them come true. Sometimes you can face outside opinions of people who doubt. Our reach for the stars attitude can be hard to keep when the times get tough. When we started Rain & Revelry, we got mixed responses from people—some were like, “Wow, cool” and some were more skeptical. We wondered, “Is it going to work here?”
20Fathoms: What’s one of your most memorable or exciting moments on your startup journey?
Yarrow: Our first launch for Rain & Revelry was the ticket sales for our upcoming Starfall Ball, which went live earlier this year (the event itself is in 2025). It was the first event we launched the concept for and the first tickets that launched. We suspected it would be a mad rush at the ticket launch, people were really excited about it, but we had 700 tickets available.
We rented Castle Farms in Charlevoix; it’s a huge venue, there’s a lot of money going into that, which was scary, we need tickets to sell. At ticket launch we all gathered together and the website crashed the moment tickets launched. To make a long story short, we had all our tickets claimed and in carts within seconds and a full buyout happened in less than 2 hours. That was our first business move with Rain & Revelry events!
We went from extreme panic – thankfully we got the site up in about 10 minutes – to selling out our first event of such magnitude in such a short time.
20Fathoms: How did you hear about the bootcamp? What made you want to attend?
Yarrow: We were actually vending for Tootsie Bluffins at the Little Traverse Bay Band pow wow, and Shiloh [Slomsky, Tribal Liaison & CFO with 20Fathoms] and I were officemates at the tribal government a few years ago. I stopped to chat with her and thought this sounded incredible, because obviously we have two businesses and need help with business and marketing. It felt like something that was attainable [to attend a bootcamp over a weekend]. We all have 6- and 3-year-olds, and it can be hard to commit to longer-term college classes.
The desire to learn more and obtain business skills was still there, so a 3-day crash course was a fabulous opportunity.
20Fathoms: What did you take away from the experience?
Yarrow: If I’m being honest –the most standout takeaway for me was the community we had surrounding us. Sometimes in business ownership it can get overwhelming, not knowing where to start or what resources are available.
There were so many great things we learned involving the business, plus so much community and resources. We secured a couple vendors to come to our events in the future and were able to build relationships we would never have found without the class.
After the class we were able to tap into 1:1 coaching, so not only did we get the crash course, but we had the opportunity to get help customized for us, which I really love.
Gina: For me, the thing I was most excited about prior to and while there was the community. It felt really good. We’re at that time of year where we were really at the end of event season, the end of super busy catering, and exhausted by it all. This was an exciting way to get the blood flowing again, and the help with the technology was huge; for example, the girls do most of their work off their cell phones, and by signing up we could get a new Chromebook, and the instructors went through Google Drive, went over other tools, and long term that will be really helpful.
20Fathoms: What’s your vision for Rain & Revelry?
Gina: The vision for us is to be the Midwest hub for these sort of events. Being moms I don’t think any of us are trying to become cross country entrepreneurs; we’d like to bring this company to a place where it supports the three of us financially and is something we can focus our efforts on and grow.
Right now, we have a few big events a year and would love to start throwing in some smaller community-based events. We hope to participate with local groups and the tribe and offer some smaller, more affordable options for people in our community.
Our next event to go live will be The Dragon Gauntlet, Chapter 2, happening in September 2025; those tickets will launch in January. It’s a bookish-inspired scavenger course through Boyne Mountain.
20Fathoms: What piece of advice would you offer other entrepreneurs?
Yarrow: For me personally, it sounds kind of corny but if you have an idea and you feel passionate about it, go for it, reach for the stars, and don’t let anything stop you.
With both businesses there have been challenging times and doubts, but if you can keep that mentality of: “this is my dream and I’m going to achieve that dream,” then you will!
Also, lean on community when you need help. I have found there are so many different resources – it can be hard to find sometimes, but there are a lot of resources you can lean on. The tribe has been a huge helpful resource.
Gina: That’s what I was going to say too – use the resources in your community, they are there for a reason. If you’re doing something you are passionate about and especially if it’s something that benefits the community at large, you’ll find the kind of help you need.