Whole Town Bands Together to Help Bride and Groom After Venue Burns Down Hours Before Their Wedding (Exclusive)

"The first thing that we did was try to find a new location for the couple," Will Gilson, whose family has owned the historic venue since 1989, tells PEOPLE

An early morning fire scorched a historic wedding venue and restaurant, The Herb Lyceum in Groton, Mass., on Sunday, Sept. 1, leaving a couple without a place to tie the knot as planned later that day. But thanks to widespread local efforts, the nuptials went on as scheduled.

Shortly after the incident, Boston's 7 News WHDH reported that fire officials were investigating the blaze that ignited around 4 a.m. The fire damaged a building on the property, leaving the structure's roof partially collapsed, the outlet noted.

Per The Herb Lyceum website, the venue and dining establishment is "a masterfully renovated 19th century carriage house" with "four acres of fragrant herb gardens, greenhouses, and flowering trees."

Will Gilson, whose family has owned the venue since 1989, tells PEOPLE that when he arrived there the morning of the fire, the carriage house was "fully ablaze, and there was nothing we could do."

He says he immediately thought of the wedding scheduled to take place there later that day.

"I'm standing there with the whole team that operates the space and we're watching this fire burn and our first thoughts are, 'How do we make sure that somebody's wedding isn't ruined because of this?' " Gilson recalls. "The first thing that we did was try to find a [new] location for the couple."

Gilson put in a call to the nearby Groton Inn, and they found a space for the wedding and even "accommodated [the couple] with a menu of everything that they could within an hour of that phone call," he tells PEOPLE, praising the inn for stepping up so generously to help.

"It was just really heartwarming to have that sort of level of willingness on their side to just jump at it and say, 'Of course.' I mean, not even thinking about the finances of it, they just said, 'We'll figure it all out later,' " Gilson notes.

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Other local businesses also pitched in. A Groton resident, who dined at a nearby restaurant that Sunday, tells PEOPLE the restaurant even temporarily removed a few dishes from its regular dining service to help supply food for the wedding.

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"The server said, 'Oh, we don't have the salmon, the chicken and the steak tips on the menu tonight because we're sending them down the road for this wedding,' " the resident recalls. "Apparently other places donated a venue, someone else donated flowers. It seemed very sweet."

The resident adds, "The whole town banded together at the last minute to ensure that the wedding still could take place as scheduled."

Related: A Bride Wanted to Get Married at Her Childhood Home, Her Dad Works for a Year to Turn It Into Her 'Dream Wedding Venue' (Exclusive)

Gilson says The Herb Lyceum team is now working to address the many upcoming weddings on their calendar in the weeks and months ahead. The community continues to rally to help, with one couple who lives in the center of Groton donating the grounds behind their home for weddings scheduled for this past weekend.

"And we've had folks reaching out to offer tents and heaters and extra hands if need be. And even the town had offered conservation land as ways that we could find a location to be able to do this as we keep navigating the future events," Gilson tells PEOPLE.

The plan, he says, is to tear down and remove the damaged carriage house as soon as possible so "it's not an eyesore" and use the venue's two lawns — which were "untouched" by the blaze — for future weddings. "The larger weddings happen inside of a greenhouse on the property which was unaffected," he notes.

Gilson says the carriage house will eventually be rebuilt. In the meantime, a GoFundMe campaign has been created to help with the rebuilding costs.

"As we continue to deal with this tragedy, we know that we want to and need to rebuild so we can continue to share this amazing space with the public again," the Gilson family wrote in a message on the fundraising page, where a goal of $500,000 has been set. "While nothing can replace the century-old beams and wood that were used in the renovation, the spirit of the building remains. This staple of the community must rise from the ashes."

The Gilsons also are planning a Friends of the Herb Lyceum Dinner for later this fall "for guests to enjoy memories and a meal from some of the chefs who have been directly associated with the farm through the past several decades," according to a press release.

A week after the blaze, Gilson tells PEOPLE that state and town officials have now concluded their investigation into the fire and were unable to determine a cause of origin.

"Which is really, it's a shame. I mean, sometimes it'd be better if we just kind of knew what had happened," he says. "But my main thing is no one was hurt and knowing that everybody was unaffected physically by it and it's just more of sort of an emotional tax on us is at least the silver lining."

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