Most people who visit Norskedalen never find the waterfall. It sits past where wedding parties usually gather, near the far edge of the property, down a walk that takes a while if you don’t already know where you’re going. Dana and David knew. They’d found it themselves on an earlier visit to the venue, scouted the shade and the light, and asked to do their first look there instead of somewhere closer to the parking lot.
The falls come straight out of the hillside and drop into a pool that’s shifted shape over the years with the valley’s floods. It’s rare for the Driftless (the hills never stop, but waterfalls are hard to come by), and this one is shaded and quiet except for the water, tucked far enough back that Dana and David had it entirely to themselves. It gave us room to work with the light instead of a crowd, and it set the tone for everything after: relaxed, a little hidden, entirely theirs.
Here’s the full gallery from Dana and David’s wedding day at Norskedalen in Coon Valley, Wisconsin, starting with their private waterfall first look.
Doing a first look this way, away from where the rest of the day happens, bought David and Dana a few real minutes together before a hundred small decisions started competing for their attention. It’s one of the best stress relievers on a wedding day, and it’s part of why we bring it up with almost every couple we work with.
David grew up in Minnesota and moved to Wisconsin in 2017, where he fell for the spring-fed streams of the Driftless Region almost as fast as he fell for Dana. Dana’s a lifelong Wisconsinite who spends as many weekends as she can up north at her family’s cabin, a habit that goes back to childhood summers building fairy houses out of sticks and moss with her sister. They found us on Instagram, drawn to how we capture shadow and movement, and told us early on that they didn’t want a day built around tradition or posing. Norskedalen, with its Norwegian log buildings and open valley, gave them a setting that matched who they actually are instead of who a typical venue expects a couple to be.
Dana and her bridesmaids got ready at the Per and Anne Paulsen Cabin, a 150-year-old log cabin on Norskedalen’s main campus. David and the groomsmen were on the other side of Coon Valley at the Farmhouse at Norskedalen’s Thrunegaarden, surrounded by the property’s other historic buildings and forty acres of Wisconsin farmland. Both kept the day’s Norwegian character intact from the start, and both beat the alternative of getting ready twenty minutes away in La Crosse.
The ceremony was short, and entirely their own, with Huxley, one of their two dogs, serving as ring bearer in a floral collar. He walked the aisle and delivered the rings without a hitch, which is always a small gamble that pays off big when it works. The wedding party got their moment with an entrance before dinner, but Dana and David never let the day tip into anything more formal than they’d planned. Their priority the whole day was simple: have fun, and make sure everyone around them felt loved and welcome.
A few things we loved:
– Cocktails named after their dogs, The Finny Boy and The Huxley, poured underneath painted Victorian-style portraits of both dogs hung behind the bar.
– Mason jars used throughout, doing double duty as the day’s unfussy, natural dinnerware.
– A two-tier floral cake from Cowboy David’s Bakery, simple and stunning, backed up by a spread of their cupcakes for guests who wanted cake to go.
– Wood-fired pizza and fresh salads from Nadi Plates, cooked and served out of their mobile kitchen.
– Norskedalen’s picnic tables, already built into the pavilion, dressed up just enough to feel intentional without losing the character of the space.
That last point is harder than it sounds. Norskedalen isn’t a ballroom, and it isn’t trying to be. The main building is a pavilion with real history behind it, which means decor can tip too formal or too plain if you’re not careful. Dana and David found the middle: enough polish to feel like a wedding, enough restraint to keep the valley itself as the main event. They told us early on that decorations weren’t a priority for them, they just wanted the natural beauty of the property and its old Norwegian buildings to do most of the work. It did.
We’ve photographed a Norskedalen wedding in the height of summer too, and the light and the greenery change the whole feel of the place from one season to the next. One couple even worked a wedding talent show into their weekend here, and we still haven’t seen anyone top it. Dana and David’s September day carried more gold in the late afternoon, especially once the sun dropped low enough to hit the same hillside as their waterfall that morning.
David told us what mattered most to him was that everyone felt loved and welcome. Dana’s answer was simpler: she wanted people to have fun, and she wanted to have fun herself. That’s about as close to a whole philosophy as we could ask for, and it held up all day. Dana and David are some of the easiest, warmest people we’ve worked with, not in a rare way exactly (a lot of the couples we photograph are really kind people), but in a way that was impossible not to notice. It made the documentary side of our job simple. We didn’t have to chase real moments. They were already there, which is exactly what to expect from a candid wedding photographer before you book us.
By 7:30 the light in the valley had gone long and gold, the same light that had been on the falls that afternoon. We got a few minutes alone with Dana and David before the band started, and then let the night take over.
Vendor credits: Day-of coordination by With Love Event Planning. Catering by Nadi Plates. Cake and cupcakes by Cowboy David’s Bakery. Flowers by Deep Rooted Organics. Hair and makeup by Metropolitan Salon & Spa. Venue: Norskedalen Nature and Heritage Center.
