Today we’d like to introduce you to Lexi Combs.
Hi Lexi, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
In April 2020, we found ourselves living in an 8ft trailer under a tree.
My boyfriend at the time, Portland native Perry Combs, and I were working at Riverhouse BBQ when the pandemic hit. Riverhouse sat just outside Yellowstone National Park in Montana, and like so many businesses, it was shut down indefinitely.
When a friend reached out needing help running a lakeside restaurant in Calaveras County, California, we took the leap. We packed up the trailer, hit the road, and landed in Copperopolis. Within six months, we owned that restaurant, Drifter’s Grill, and ran it through 13-hour days, six days a week, during one of the toughest stretches the industry has ever seen.
I found my love of events there. I started organizing night markets, mini concerts, boat parades, anything the community needed. In the off season I picked up wedding photography, shot my first wedding, and fell hard for the industry. Perry and I got engaged, and planning our own wedding while running a restaurant made everything click. The question wasn’t ~if~ I should become a wedding planner, but ~how~ to build something real out of it.
We relocated to Brightwood, Oregon to care for Perry’s grandfather Darrell, on Wildfern Drive, which is where the company name comes from. He called me his “smartest little cookie” and believed in this dream before I fully did. We lost him in September 2025, but his belief still shapes how we run our businesses today.
Hospitality was always in me. I grew up around my parents’ mom-and-pop businesses in California’s Central Valley, where my Mexican American heritage taught me early on what it meant to bring people together. Later, I worked my way through college at Montana State (earning degrees in Political Science and Psychology) as a bartender. Hospitality was always the real degree.
In January 2023, I launched Wild Fern Group offering coordination for $700 just to prove people would pay for it. My first client booked a month later in Yelm, WA, and I made the three hour drive in Grandad’s car, dreaming of a time when I would be heading to a wedding every weekend. By 2024, we’d transitioned into full service planning and I went full time, averaging 25 weddings a year. Being fluent in Spanish opened the door to international clients, and in April 2026 we planned our first destination wedding, in Costa Rica.
Perry brought his food and beverage background into the business, and together we launched a private event bartending company to capture more of the work we were already doing at every wedding. He became the operational backbone of both companies. Eventually we asked ourselves what it would take to bring that same energy into a physical space every day. In January 2026, we bought Swift Lounge, a longtime neighborhood bar on NE Broadway.
Today Wild Fern Group is a team of 16, running dozens of weddings and events a year for clients across the country and internationally, all built from a laptop, an 8ft trailer, and a grandfather who believed in the “smartest little cookie” he knew.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Anyone who runs a business knows the road is rarely smooth. In the early days, the sheer uncertainty was the hardest part. I remember staring at my inbox, wondering when the next inquiry would hit. Moving to full-time entrepreneurship meant the safety net was gone. I had bills to pay and a point to prove, and going backward simply wasn’t an option.
Before Wild Fern Group, Perry and I were drowning in college debt, working as local servers and bartenders, wondering if we would ever break out of that financial cycle. Starting the company wasn’t an automatic fix. The real turning point was the relentless work it took to sustain it: staying relevant in a competitive market, maintaining an insane work ethic, and keeping that momentum going even when fear set in.
As we scaled, the challenge shifted from personal survival to team building. Wild Fern was my baby. For a long time, I struggled with the idea of delegating, terrified that no one else would hold the same standard of execution or care as deeply as I did. On top of that, there was the heavy financial responsibility: the business was feeding my family, but was it strong enough to support someone else’s?
What I learned through that process transformed me as a leader. I found out that there are extraordinary people who will care for your vision with the same intensity you do. They care about supporting me, they align with our mission, and they take immense pride in carrying the brand forward. Learning to trust and build a team wasn’t just necessary for growth; it’s what allowed us to become the powerhouse we are today, (shout out to my Wild Fern team).
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
Wild Fern Group is a full-service wedding planning, event design, and mobile bartending company, but at our core, we are experience curators. Our motto, “Wild by Nature, Refined by Design,” defines everything we do. We take raw energy, authentic emotion, and ambitious ideas, and weave them into seamless, high-caliber celebrations.
What sets us apart is how we approach the entire journey. For us, wedding planning isn’t just about managing logistics on the wedding day itself, it is about honoring the entire chapter of life leading up to it. Engagement should be a joyous, celebrated era, not a season consumed by stress and overwhelming decisions. We serve as a steady, design-forward partner from day one, stepping in to absorb the complexity of budgeting, vendor curation, custom styling, and production scheduling. Our couples get to actually enjoy being engaged, knowing every single detail is handled with precision.
On the event day, we design for two distinct perspectives: the couple and their guests. For our couples, we create a calm, elevated environment where they can be fully present. For their guests, we engineer an immersive, high-energy experience from the moment they arrive to the final song of the night. Between our full-service planning expertise and our sister company’s mobile bartending services, we manage the flow, the aesthetic, and the hospitality end-to-end.
Brand-wise, I am most proud of our reputation for creating authentic, unforgettable atmospheres without ever sacrificing operational perfection. We are not here to execute cookie-cutter templates. We learn what makes a couple unique and craft a celebration that feels warm, intentional, and unmistakably them.
What I want readers to know is simple: when you work with Wild Fern Group, you are not just hiring a vendor team to check off a to-do list. You are bringing on a team of passionate professionals who know how to host a genuinely good time, elevate your vision, and deliver a seamless, world-class experience that you and your guests will talk about for decades.
Is there a quality that you most attribute to your success?
The most important characteristic behind my success is an unwavering, immersive dedication. The biggest investment I make in this business is my time, and when people talk about putting in “countless hours,” that couldn’t be truer for me. I don’t clock in and clock out. My brain is constantly working, observing, and creating.
I can be out with my family heading to dinner and spot a specific wildflower that completely locks in the vision for a couple’s floral board. I can be walking through the grocery store and come across a unique ingredient that sparks the idea for a signature cocktail telling another couple’s exact love story.
I am driven daily by the inspiration all around me, and honestly, I can’t turn it off. When a couple invests in Wild Fern Group, they aren’t just getting a project manager for their event date. They are getting someone who is fully immersed, completely dedicated, and constantly thinking about how to build a celebration that authentically represents who they are. That level of obsession with the details is what turns a good event into an unforgettable one.
Pricing:
- Day-of Coordination and Wedding Planning Guidance – $3000
- Partial-Planning: A Partnership – $6000
- Full-Service Planning – $12000
- Mobile Bartending – $1600+
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.wildferngrp.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wildferngrp
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wildferngrp
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/wild-fern-group-portland?osq=wild+fern+group+wedding+planning&override_cta=Get+information
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@wildferngrp
