A red-tailed hawk watched Jamie and Scott’s ceremony from the peak of the roof the entire time, like it had a personal stake in how the day went. Nobody planned that. It was late September at Aldo Leopold Nature Center in Monona, just outside Madison, the prairie and woods around the building turning every shade of rust and gold, and the whole landscape felt like it had shown up as a guest.

Jamie is a pastry chef. Scott farms organic vegetables. They met through food, the kind of slow-built connection that starts with talking about what’s in season and turns into something else before either person quite notices. Two decades and two teenagers later, most of their favorite things are still small and specific: music they make together, board games at the kitchen table, quiet winters with the fire going. None of it reads as flashy on paper. In person, on their wedding day, it showed up as ease: two people who already knew exactly how to be around each other.

Jamie has four sisters. One of them is named Beth, and more than one guest made the Little Women joke over the course of the day. They’re the warmest group of sisters we’ve photographed in a long time, in and out of each other’s space all day without any of the usual wedding-day tension. When Scott saw Jamie in her dress for the first time, he didn’t hold it together, and neither did we. That’s rare enough that we still notice it every time it happens. If you want a fuller sense of how we actually work on a wedding day, we’ve written about what to expect working with a candid wedding photographer.

Here’s more from Jamie and Scott’s day at Aldo Leopold Nature Center, from getting ready with the sisters through the last dance.

The gallery moves through the sisters getting ready, the ceremony under that hawk, cocktail hour with Chef Andy’s food, and portraits out by the marsh as the light started to go gold.

By golden hour we’d moved out toward the marsh for portraits, and a pair of sandhill cranes started calling from somewhere close by, that unmistakable, layered sound carrying across the water while the light did exactly what we’d hoped it would. Aldo Leopold Nature Center is built so the architecture stays out of the way of the land around it, and by evening that’s all you can really see: color, water, birds, two people who’d just gotten married standing in the middle of it. It’s one of the venues on our best Wisconsin wedding venues list, and after two weddings there now, we understand why. You can see more of the weddings we photograph around Madison here. If you’re considering it for your own wedding, we put together a full guide to getting married at Aldo Leopold Nature Center.

Jamie made her own wedding cake, which tracks. Chef Andy Ziegler of Athens Grill handled the rest of the food, and between the two of them, this was one of the better-fed wedding days we’ve had. Fitting, for two people who found each other through food in the first place.

September in Wisconsin has a short window where the leaves peak, the bugs are gone, and the light turns gold two hours earlier than it does in July. Jamie and Scott hit it dead center. We’ve written more about the best time of year to get married in Wisconsin if you’re still weighing your date.

Vendors from the day:

• Florist – Shida Preserved Flowers
• Cake – Cake by Jamie
• Catering – Chef Andy Ziegler, Athens Grill
• DJ – Kuhl Entertainment
• Hair – Trish Morris
• Makeup – Shannon Pesca
• Dress – Willowby Watters, Aurelia
• Shoes – Cole Haan
• Rings – Middleton Jeweler
• Invitations & Programs – Papier

The hawk was still on the roof when we packed up the cars at the end of the night.