Tara and Casey got married at Hilltop in the fall of 2013, and the detail that still comes up when we talk about this wedding is the walk. The ceremony and cocktail hour happened up near the main buildings, under the big catalpa tree, but dinner and dancing were a hundred yards down the road at a separate pavilion with its own bar. Guests had to actually move through the property to get from one part of the day to the next, and that changed the whole feel of the reception. It wasn’t one room where everyone sat still all night. It had momentum built right into the layout.

We’ve shot weddings where everything happens in one tent, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But Hilltop’s split reception is rare, and it’s the reason this wedding still comes up nearly a decade later. Here are a few of our favorites from the day.

Casey works in video marketing and can recite more pop culture trivia than should probably be legal. Tara’s spent the last several years as a project manager in healthcare IT, traveling constantly for work and thriving on exactly the pace that would burn most people out. Ask either of them how they balance each other and you get the same answer: she’s the planner, he’s the one who goes with it. They’re childhood sweethearts who didn’t actually get together until well into adulthood, which might explain why they both seem so sure of it now.

They came to us wanting something photojournalistic over posed. “Years from now I likely won’t remember what my wedding dress looked like,” Tara told us before the wedding, “but I want to look at the photos and be able to relive it.” Casey put it his own way: he wanted authenticity, not the overwrought tropes of traditional wedding photography. What mattered most to them on the day itself was simpler than either of those quotes: getting everyone they loved into one room, and Casey, by his own admission, trying hard not to cry like a giant baby doing it.

We first met Tara and Casey at their engagement session in Madison, and somewhere in the middle of it, Casey started telling us about a band he’d booked for the wedding, Rod Tuff Curls and the Bench Press. We nodded along and filed it under the same category most vendor tips go into: probably fine, we’ll see. We were wrong to file it there.

The band played through set after set of dance hits, worked in a full Jewish hora complete with the chair-lifting, and did it all in clean, formal-ish attire that looked exactly like what you’d expect from a wedding band. Then they took an intermission, came back out in vintage tracksuits and tube socks, and the whole night changed gears. They were jumping off the speakers. Guests who’d been politely swaying were suddenly all-in. It’s not a band for every wedding, but if you want people still talking about the music a year later, book them. Casey was right, and we should’ve believed him the first time.

These photos are from 2013, shot on gear and edited in a style we’ve moved past since. But the way we worked that day, quiet, close, and out of the way, is still how we work now.

We’ve photographed a lot of Hilltop weddings since. Our Hilltop venue guide pulls together what we’ve learned about the place.