Long Story Short: The Wisconsin Wedding

Our Small Family Wedding

The Wisconsin wedding will take place the weekend after the Hawaii wedding
July 10th, 2010
(Also Mike's Birthday)

This will be an intimate affair with our immediate families and a few friends. This wedding ceremony gives us the opportunity to share our commitment to each other with our families as well as giving our families the opportunity to meet and get to know each other.

The wedding with be a full weekend of fun. The families will be staying in the cabins at Nordic Pines http://nordicpines.com/ which are conveniently located across the street from the North entrance to Devil's Lake State Park http://www.devilslakewisconsin.com/ (the website has maps and details about any of the specifics referred to below).

Friday

The plan is to travel from Cedarburg, Sarah's family's home just north of Milwaukee, to Devil's Lake on the morning of Friday July 9th.
It is about a 2.5 hour drive. (You might want to bring some entertainment)

We will head straight to the White Oak pavilion, that we reserved for the day, on the south shore of the lake. There are picnic tables and bathrooms here, and we can set up for a picnic lunch.

(it will be less snowy when we are there)

There is time for swimming, boating, hiking and just hanging out with everyone.

For those of you coming in from outside of Wisconsin, Sarah's family has offered to bring extra beach toys, pack and plays, towels, strollers and other assorted kid stuff for all of the families. Please let us know about any specific items that you might need and we will work on rounding all of the supplies together.

(Snow will be very unlikely in July)

Sometime after 2:00, Nordic Pines' check-in time, after everyone has had a chance to play at the lake, we will head over to the cottages to get unpacked.
Depending on the weather, we will either have the rehearsal dinner at Nordic Pines or, if it is raining, back at the White Oak pavilion in the park.
There are areas to have campfires at each of the cottages as we transition into the evening activities.

The Wedding Day
Saturday, July 10th is the wedding day!
Here is the general plan (times are tentative and are intended to provide more info for those "planners" out there):

We will start the morning by getting Nordic Pines set up for the reception (weather permitting) and getting together everything that we will need to bring over to Devil's Lake for the ceremony (9-10:30).

After all of the organizing is through, everyone will head over to the North shore of Devil's lake to the CCC/Rock Elm shelter that we reserved for the day. We can stage all of our stuff there until the ceremony (if we do the ceremony at a separate location: a decision that we will be making on Friday)

At this time, we would like to separate into two groups. The men (including the little ones) will go with Mike to have some special "man-time" and lunch before the ceremony. The women (including the little ones) will stay with Sarah at the Rock Elm shelter to have some "Girl-time" and lunch before the ceremony (10:30-12).

At noon, we will all meet back up at the Rock Elm shelter to gather the supplies for the ceremony and walk together to the ceremony site (if it is raining we will stay at the shelter).

Ceremony! This should be a very interactive event led by our personal friend Reverend Lizzy (Oh Wow!). As it stands now, we blocked out time from 1:00-3:00 for ceremony activities. We know we have a lot of little guys to think about and nap times. We will have picnic blanket seating for the ceremony and anyone that needs to take a nap during the ceremony is welcome to do so, though it might not be as acceptable if you are an adult.

We have not worked out all of the ceremony details yet, but we plan on having a special activity for all of the kids to participate in so that they can have a special part in our special day. We will keep everyone posted as those developments happen.

After the ceremony, we plan on taking some pictures. Probably quite a few pictures. It is the first opportunity in a long time to have all members of each family together in addition to capturing the wedding memories. Thank you to Steve and Roger for accepting the request to play photographer. We also welcome anyone else to help with pictures since we have such rich talent throughout the group (3-4:30).

(All sorts of talents)

After the pictures and hugs and maybe some happy tears, we will head back to Nordic Pines for some food, music, yard games and campfire (5-?).

Sunday

The plan on Sunday is to have a picnic breakfast together at Nordic Pines- maybe with a little Knox Maple syrup!
The check-out time for the cottages is 11:00 am.
We can head back over to Devil's lake for some more fun activities until everyone needs to leave.

We hope everyone is excited for this fun weekend! We certainly are. Please let us know if you have any questions at this point. Details will be growing as we get closer to July, so check back in with this blog or Mike and Sarah as the big day nears.

Here are some family photos and names to help everyone get acquainted before the wedding weekend. (Get ready, there are a lot of Steves)

Sue, Sarah's Mom and Rick, Sarah's Dad

Ricky, Sarah's oldest brother, his Wife Aricka and their kids Ella and Patrick.

Jenny, Sarah's oldest sister, her husband Steve and their kids Logan and Caitlin, and a cow (no relation)

Jessi, Sarah's older sister, her husband Bryan and their kids Owen and Brooklyn

Sarah and Mike with all of the kids: Logan, Patrick, Ella, Caitlin and Brooklyn (way over on the right)

Steve, Sarah's younger brother

Now Mike's Family

(Left to Right) Mike (Groom), Michele (sister-in-law - Roger), Roger (oldest brother), Hayden (Roger and Michele's oldest son - 5), Autumn (Steve and Nicole's daughter - 5 1/2), Ken (Father), Tyler (Roger and Michele's youngest son - 2), Janet (Mother), Nicole (sister-in-law - Steve), Zane (Steve and Nicole's middle son - 2), Steve (middle brother).