We’d actually photographed Akram years before Nora and Akram ever reached out to us, back when he was working at the Wonderstate Coffee roastery in Viroqua. So when their inquiry came in, we already had a face to put with the name. That’s rare for us. We shoot weddings full time, and most couples are strangers to us until we video chat and hear their stories. This one was different. Their wedding was packed with familiar faces from around La Crosse and Viroqua: people we knew well, people we half knew from years of running into them, and the whole day felt less like work and more like we’d been folded into the guest list ourselves.
Nora and Akram come from different cultural backgrounds, and instead of choosing one tradition over the other, they built a ceremony that held both. It incorporated elements of their Christian and Muslim heritage throughout, held outdoors, with prayers and speeches from both families woven through it. At one point, the women in Akram’s family led a Palestinian call and response blessing, sung in Arabic, wishing the couple well. It’s meant to be part serious and part silly, and watching it happen in real time, surrounded by two families who clearly adored these two, was one of the most moving things we’ve shot all year.
They got married at The Nature Place. You might still know it by its old name, Myrick Park Center (the rebrand is fairly recent, and plenty of La Crosse still calls it that out of habit). Whatever you call it, it’s one of our favorite venues in the city, maybe our actual favorite. The building sits right up against the bluffs and the water, with floor to ceiling windows that flood the atrium with light, and it’s built so the line between indoors and outdoors almost disappears. Nora and Akram held their ceremony outside, right in front of the building, facing the bluffs and the marsh. The architecture behind them gave the space shape without needing much decor to do the work.
More on weddings we photograph around La Crosse and the Driftless here.
A few things we love about shooting here:
– The light moving through the atrium all day, indoors or out
– Bluff and marsh views that don’t need a filter
– An outdoor ceremony space with structure already built in
– A small nature center room down the hall, with turtles, snakes, and an aquarium
– Five minutes from downtown La Crosse while feeling like you’re nowhere near it
Nora and Akram got ready that morning at the Charmant Hotel, a beautifully restored historic building not far from the venue. It’s one of our favorite places to shoot a getting ready: great light, real character in the old brick and woodwork, and suites big enough to fit a full wedding party without everyone tripping over each other.
Akram has one of those smiles that makes you want to trust him immediately, and Nora told us why. He has a way of finding the good in almost anyone, even people who come across guarded or judgmental at first. He’ll walk up, strike up a conversation, and within a few minutes he’s found common ground, giving that person room to be more than what people assumed about them. Nora’s a local vet with that same grounded, easy to talk to quality. We run into both of them around town more than we do most past clients, and it’s never awkward. They’re just easy people to know.
The dancing is where the two families really came together. Traditional attire was there from the start, and it all blended together once everyone hit the dance floor. A song turned into a makeshift limbo line, and there were enough games scattered through the night that nobody sat still for long. It’s the kind of reception that photographs well because nobody’s performing for the camera. They’re just having a genuinely good time, which is what we’re always hoping to catch.
