Hilltop used to be a camp. Before it was ever a wedding venue, before anyone thought to put a ceremony under that catalpa tree, it was where a few generations of Wisconsin girls spent their summers. That history is still the whole shape of the place: the buildings scattered across the hillside instead of clustered into one, the dorm that’s now a getting-ready room, the sense that nothing here was built to impress anyone, just to hold them well.

A camp before it was a venue

Herb and Eloise Fritz ran Camp Hilltop for decades, and generations of girls came through it every summer. Former campers still call themselves Hilltoppers, and more than a few of them chose to get married on the property years before it was ever formally available as a wedding venue. That’s not a marketing detail. It’s the reason the place has the kind of built-in warmth that a venue built specifically for weddings usually has to manufacture.

Ty and Janelle Fritz run it now. A student of Frank Lloyd Wright designed the buildings, a couple of miles from Taliesin itself, and the property still carries that lineage: low rooflines, natural materials, buildings that settle into the hillside instead of standing over it. What used to be a girls’ dorm is where wedding parties get ready today. The smaller cabins that dot the property, easy to miss on a first visit, were built for camp staff and family, not for guests at a wedding, and that’s exactly why they still feel lived-in instead of staged.

Built on the brow, not the top

Frank Lloyd Wright built Taliesin into the brow of the hill instead of on top of it. In his own words, a house should be “of the hill, belonging to it,” not perched over it. Hilltop follows the same logic, and the name ends up being a bit of a misnomer. The buildings sit low against the slope, tucked below the crest with trees rising behind them, so the sun drops behind that tree line earlier than you’d expect. Golden hour here is real but brief, and the light doesn’t rake across the property the way it does somewhere with an open western view.

There’s good open space on the lawn next to the ceremony area, and it works fine for most of what a wedding day needs. But if you’re willing to spend ten minutes round-trip in the car, Peck’s Landing on the Wisconsin River, five minutes down the road, gives you the best sunset and golden hour light anywhere near Spring Green, especially when the water’s low and the sandbars are exposed. It’s the same spot where Aistis and Meghan started their wedding morning with a few friends and coffee. We’d send almost any couple there for at least a few frames before the light’s gone.

The tent

The dining tent is the single best-designed part of this property, and it’s not close. Most wedding tents are just a tent: four poles and a rented top, dropped wherever there’s flat ground. This one is built into the landscape on purpose. The land itself blocks the wind, historic camp buildings and a stone retaining wall mark the edges of the space, and guests can still wander in and out of it freely instead of feeling boxed in. It’s sheltered and open at the same time, which is a harder trick than it sounds, and we haven’t shot anywhere else in Wisconsin that pulls it off the same way.

A few years ago, Erin and Jeremy of Enos Farms moved their annual Harvest Moon Dinner here on short notice, rain in the forecast and nowhere else to go. It’s a progressive dinner, multiple courses in multiple spots, and Hilltop held all of it without anyone getting wet or losing the evening’s shape. Here’s what that night looked like, a good sense of how this property handles weather that isn’t cooperating.

The catalpa tree, and the buildings around it

Ceremonies happen under a big catalpa tree on a quiet, dead-end stretch of the property, away from the parking and the noise of setup. It’s a single tree doing the work most venues need an arbor or a floral installation to do: wide canopy, real shade, and it photographs like it’s always been the ceremony spot, because at this point, it basically has.

Walk the rest of the property and you notice the buildings before you notice any single one of them: small cabins set at different elevations, a stone retaining wall here, an old dorm there, none of it arranged in a straight line. That’s the camp layout showing through. Most wedding venues are designed around one central building. Hilltop is the opposite, and it’s why a reception here has more movement built into it than almost anywhere else we shoot.

Good to know before you tour

The address is 6447 Hilltop Rd, Spring Green, WI 53588. Hilltop books seasonally, June through September, so plan your date and your tour around that window.

Hilltop doesn’t have its own website right now. The most reliable way to reach them is by phone, (608) 588-2251, or through the Spring Green Area Chamber of Commerce, who list the property and can point you in the right direction. Guest capacity and pricing aren’t published anywhere we could find, which isn’t unusual for a venue this size and this personal. Call and ask; you’ll get a straighter answer than any directory would give you.

Ty and Janelle run the property, and they’ve hosted plenty of our couples over the years. Janelle especially is warm and genuinely proud of the place, and she also holds her own rules for it closely. If she asks you to do something a specific way, it’s because she cares about how the buildings and the land get treated. Read the contract carefully and ask questions early.

Where to stay

If your guests are driving in from Madison or Milwaukee for the weekend, House on the Rock Resort is a few minutes down the road and shares the same fieldstone, built-into-the-hillside feel as Hilltop itself. It’s an easy, obvious add for anyone staying over.

Wedding parties specifically tend to land in one of three places nearby, all a short drive and all sharing Hilltop’s own design language. Aldebaran Farm sits across the road from Taliesin itself, renovated by Frank Lloyd Wright’s son-in-law, who studied under him, with views of the Taliesin barn and a short walk to Unity Chapel. It sleeps eleven. The Glass House of Spring Green is a 1984 single-story home built into a ridge of native prairie, its central room walled in glass, on 24 protected acres four minutes from House on the Rock. Elderflower Retreat sits just below the crest of its own hill, the same brow-of-the-hill placement as Hilltop, overlooking a working silvopasture with Taliesin in view. We photographed a micro wedding there as well, if you want to see the inside of it.
Book early if your date falls anywhere near American Players Theatre’s summer season. All three fill up fast, and so does everything else in town.

A weekend, not just a wedding day

Spring Green earns a full weekend, not just a wedding day, and it’s easy to build that into the invitations.

Taliesin is a few minutes away, and the real thing beats whatever photos your guests have already seen online. Downtown, Arcadia Books is equal parts bookstore and coffee shop, and Convivio is the spot for gifts and a good bottle of something, with a small bar tucked into the basement. The Wisconsin River runs right through the area, and canoeing or tubing it is an easy way to fill a Saturday morning before anyone needs to be anywhere formal.

For food, Enos Farms is the caterer we’ve seen most often at Hilltop weddings, farm-to-table, and it’s easy to see why. In town, Reunion Family Barbecue does all-wood-smoked meats in a beautifully restored 1914 bank building, and White School Collective serves wood-fired pizza out of a converted historic schoolhouse with a garden out back, no reservations needed.

 

Weddings we’ve photographed at Hilltop

– Tara and Casey’s wedding: the clearest example of Hilltop’s split reception, dinner in the main tent, dancing down the road at the pavilion.

– Aistis and Meghan’s wedding: a fall ceremony under the catalpa tree, a morning at Peck’s Landing before any of it started, and two quiet moments during the vows that still stick with us.

– Tatty and Peter’s wedding: an overcast, unhurried day, right in the thick of the property’s rustic, camp-era buildings.

– Erin and Jeremy’s wedding: a full weekend, an intimate Friday ceremony at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Unity Chapel, then a full Saturday celebration back at Hilltop with everyone else.

We’ll keep adding to this list as we photograph more weddings here.

The most recent thing we’ve shot at Hilltop wasn’t a wedding. It was the last Harvest Moon Dinner, and it’s closer to our current style and gear than any of the weddings above. See those photos here for a better sense of where our work stands today.

Ready to see it yourself

If you’re picturing your wedding at Hilltop, we know this venue well and we’d love to be your photographers. Get in touch here.