Southeastern Wisconsin has some of the strongest vintage-rental design work in the state, and a rotating cast of caterers who understand a wedding menu doesn’t have to look like a hotel banquet.

Same two questions apply here as everywhere else on the site. Are they excellent at the actual work, and are they good to have around when something goes wrong. This is part of our Wisconsin wedding vendors list, and it follows the same rule as the rest of it: if we haven’t shared a wedding with someone, we say so.

 

Catering & Sweets

Best for farm-to-fork done right: Tall Guy & a Grill. One wedding with them so far, and they fill a real gap out here, because most of the traditional catering options in this region don’t do farm-to-fork well. These guys do.

Best if you want catering, floral and design handled together: Gracious Events. One wedding together. A good call if you’d rather coordinate with one company than three.

Best for a Burlington-area bakery: Blackbird Bakery. The regional pick if you’re getting married south of the city and don’t want to add a Milwaukee pickup to your wedding morning.

Floral

Best if you want florals and full design under one roof: Mod Bloom, serving Milwaukee and Janesville. We’ve worked one wedding with them, and they’re a useful name if your venue sits between markets, since they’ll cover either end without a travel conversation.

Best Delafield-based studio: Avant Garden. We’ve shared one wedding with them. If you’re getting married out in the lake country west of the city, this saves you both a delivery fee and a florist who has never laid eyes on your venue.

Best for another solid regional option: Willow Design. One wedding on our books. A steady, unfussy florist rather than a statement one, and some weddings want exactly that.

Hair & Makeup

Best dedicated bridal team: The Bridal Beauty Team. They’ve been on three of our weddings, more than anyone else in this category on our whole list, and they work the Madison side of the state as well. A calm crew in a room that is usually anything but.

Rentals & Tents

Best for an upscale, intimate wedding: Under The Sky Event Rental. They deliver nationwide, and we’ve watched their teepees work at a real Wisconsin wedding rather than just in a portfolio.

Best for high-end tents done right: Blue Peak Tents, out of Batavia, Illinois. We’ve seen their work firsthand and it’s a different tier of tent than most companies carry. They serve the Madison side too.

Best for curated vintage pieces: Gertrude & Evelyn Vintage Rentals, Burlington. They’re part of why we said this region has the strongest vintage-rental work in the state. We haven’t worked a wedding with them, so this one rests on the collection rather than our own experience.

Best vintage-rental option based in the city: Table of Contents Vintage Rentals, Milwaukee. Another we know by their inventory rather than from a shared wedding. Being in the city does mean you can go put your hands on the pieces before you commit to them.

Best for a Kenosha-area wedding: Perfectly Posh Events. The closest option if you’re getting married down in the far southeast corner of the state. Reputation only so far.

Best for general rentals in the city: Relics Rentals, Milwaukee. We haven’t shared a wedding with them yet ourselves, but they’re a name we’re comfortable pointing couples toward when the rest of this category is more design than you actually need.

Planning

Best if you want a planner who sends us couples, not just books them: Dare to Dream Weddings, Milwaukee. They’ve referred couples our way for years. We haven’t worked a wedding side by side with them yet. They send work to photographers they rate, with nothing in it for themselves. Badly run companies don’t do that.

Music, DJs & Bands

Best local DJ pick: Milwaukee Airwaves. We’ve worked one wedding with them, and the floor stayed full right to the end of the night.

Best if you want a Chicago crew that’s happy to make the drive: Toast & Jam. We’ve worked a wedding with them, so the travel isn’t theoretical. They show up and they’re easy to have on site.

Best Chicago band worth the travel: Bluewater Kings. No shared wedding with them yet, so treat this as a name rather than a credit. It’s a big-band setup, so check that your venue can actually hold them before you fall for the videos.

Videography

Best for a documentary-style film from a team we know personally: MannFrau, Milwaukee. We photographed the wedding of one of the owners’ siblings, Whit and Wolf, at Camp Dewan, so we’ve seen this team up close, even if that was from the photography side of the day rather than working beside them as videographers.

Best Chicago-based options if you want film, not just photos: I Do Films and Studio272, both out of Chicago and both willing to travel. We haven’t shared a wedding with either yet, so treat these as names on our radar rather than worked-with credits.

Best for a documentary-first approach: Jahr Wedding Films, Madison-based but covering the whole state. See our Madison & South Central vendor list for the full entry.

Best for a nostalgic, Super 8-style film: Courtney Rae Films, out of Minneapolis. See our La Crosse & Driftless vendor list for the full entry. They travel statewide.

Something else worth knowing about: we also shoot our own stop-motion wedding films, a three to five minute film built frame by frame from thousands of photos taken across your day. It plays more like a flipbook of your wedding than a highlight reel. We shoot it ourselves alongside your photos, so there’s no second crew to coordinate around.

Not sure which style you’re even looking for, or whether you want video at all? We wrote a longer guide on choosing a wedding videographer in Wisconsin, including what it costs and when to skip it.

Photo Booth

Best photo booth on this entire list, full stop: Big Foot Foto Co. Their yellow bus showed up at Erin and Dan’s wedding at Burlap and Bells, and past the booth itself being good, the guy running it was easy to have around for an entire night. He helped out, he read the room, and he stayed clear when staying clear was the right call. That second part is exactly what we mean about team players.

Getting married on the western side of this region, or wondering whether Madison might be the better fit? Take a look at our Madison & South Central vendor list, since a few names show up on both. And if you want to see what our work actually looks like around Milwaukee before you reach out, here’s our Milwaukee wedding photography page.

For where these decisions sit in the whole sequence, our Wisconsin wedding planning guide runs from the date forward.

Getting married in Southeastern Wisconsin and want a second opinion on any of this? Send us a note. Happy to talk it through.