Tatty and Peter met leading canoe and backpacking trips out of a camp in northern Minnesota, so there was something fitting about getting married at a venue that spent decades as a girls’ camp before anyone thought to host a wedding there. Their day at Hilltop stayed overcast start to finish, no rain, no hard sun, just soft, even light that gave the whole thing a kind of quiet. Here’s some of what we caught on August 29th, 2014.
That morning, Tatty put on her grandmother’s wedding dress for a few photos. It fit her perfectly.
Dinner was farm-to-table, all local. Dessert was a biscuit pie à la mode, which we hadn’t seen at a wedding before or since. Tatty and Peter took their plates and found a quiet spot away from the group to eat it together, just the two of them, before rejoining everyone. Most of the day went like that, moving between time with their people and moments that were just theirs, present for both without picking one over the other. It’s harder to pull off than it sounds, and it’s exactly the kind of thing this venue makes room for.
They’d moved from Portland, Oregon to Madison by then, Tatty in grad school for speech-language pathology, Peter three years into a job at Epic after teaching high school math and music. Neither had let go of the outdoors, hiking, canoeing, cycling, the kind of trip-planning instinct that doesn’t go away just because summer camp did. Peter’s favorite thing about Tatty was how she was with kids, patient and creative in a way that told him who she really was. Tatty’s favorite thing about Peter was his steadiness, thoughtful, careful with his words, slow to budge on what he believed but genuinely open to hearing it differently.
“Your pictures of people are genuine and sincere,” Peter told us before the wedding. “Nothing feels posed.” That’s still exactly what we’re after, every time.
Congratulations, Tatty and Peter. Thank you for trusting us with a day that meant this much to you both. If you’re picturing your own wedding at Hilltop, our venue guide has more on the property, the history, and what to know before you tour.
