Of the three weddings we’ve photographed at Camp Wandawega, this was the big one. Danielle and Andrew planned it from Los Angeles and filled the property with people who came in from everywhere, and it ran like a camp weekend that happened to have a wedding in the middle of it.
Danielle made all the florals herself. Her bouquet was a burst of peonies in orange, peach and white with small greens coming out the sides. The reception tables got the calmer version of the same idea: peonies mixed with fabric flowers, craspedia stems with their small yellow balls, a new little bouquet every five inches or so. Probably twenty of them down each long table. Seating assignments lived in a vintage suitcase. Guests went home with honey.
They got married in the usual spot, lake behind them, benches out front. We made portraits by the teepee afterward, and somewhere in there we found a tree frog. Danielle held it in her hand without a second of hesitation, which tells you a fair amount about her.
Wandawega is a place where everything is a prop. Guests picked up canoe paddles and old camp hats and whatever vintage gear was sitting around, and half our favorite photos from the day are people who wandered off and made their own scene. Someone’s uncle got on the archery range and hit the target, and the frame we love from that isn’t him. It’s the ring of people behind him watching it land.
The tent had wooden posts and lights strung through it, formal in a way that somehow still belonged at a camp. That’s where everyone was when the rain came through mid-afternoon. Rain in the middle of a wedding day does something you can’t plan for. It pushes everybody into one space and keeps them there, and the day gets closer than it would have been. It let up in the evening, and we walked Danielle and Andrew down to the dock while the sky was still sorting itself out, warm clouds and cool ones stacked over each other in the same frame.
The bonfire was ten feet tall and six across, built out of full logs. Joe, who runs things on the ground at camp, lit it with a generous assist from a can of gas, and it went up all at once. Danielle and Andrew put out a s’mores bar under pennant flags, sticks and chocolate laid out for anybody who wanted it. The only real trouble with a fire that big is that nobody can get close enough to cook anything on it.
We’ve shot two other weddings at Camp Wandawega: Heather and Scott’s mid-week wedding and David and Heather’s Tuesday wedding with five guests, and no two have looked alike.
If you’re planning a Camp Wandawega wedding, we know this place. Send us a note.
