Annika and Michael got married on a soft spring Saturday that lived in three places: her family's place on Serpent Lake, a full Catholic nuptial Mass at St. Joseph's in Crosby, and a string-lit reception at The Forty Club in Aitkin. That's a shape I love photographing up in the Cuyuna Range — the quiet Crosby-and-Aitkin corner of the Brainerd Lakes — the morning at the house, the rite in the church, the party in the hall, stitched together by two short drives.
This one turned out to be the first of three. I've since photographed both of Annika's sisters getting married — Melanie & Cole at Grand View Lodge the week of Christmas, and Isabella & Ryan there again the night before the country turned 250. Three sisters, three weddings. Annika and Michael met at Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio — and if you know anything about that school, a lot of what happens later in this post will make immediate sense.
What I remember most about Annika and Michael isn't a venue. It's how little distance there was between who they were at the altar and who they were on the dance floor. Reverent through a full nuptial Mass, incense and all, and then two hours later kneeling on a hardwood floor in a borrowed hoodie. Same people. No costume change, spiritually speaking. What follows is the day in the order it happened.
MorningGetting Ready on Serpent Lake
The day started slow at her family's place on Serpent Lake — a Tudor stone-and-timber house with brick front steps and spring gardens just starting to come back. Her gown hung against a plaid wall between two dusty-blue bridesmaid dresses. Her beaded flats sat on a square of pink brocade with a monogrammed handkerchief folded underneath. Down the hall, one of the little ones had planted herself on the kitchen island in pineapple-print pajamas and a flower crown, sharing a drink with the bride through two straws, both of them looking dead into my lens like they'd been caught.
Across the house Michael was getting dressed with his groomsmen orbiting him — cufflinks, a bow tie being straightened by somebody's hands, then several sets of hands at once. A boy in a navy suit knelt on the floor to tie his own dress shoes with tremendous concentration. Upstairs, kids ran the length of a wood-paneled hallway because that's what a house full of relatives does to children.
Then two quieter ones, back to back. Her mother fastening the veil into her hair by the window while Annika sat still and let it happen. And a minute later, Annika coming down the stairs with the train pouring behind her — I shot it from above, and there's a crucifix on the wall at the bottom of the frame that I didn't notice until I was editing. The whole rest of the day is in that accident.
MiddayA Blindfolded First Look at the Altar
They did their first look inside St. Joseph's, and they did it their way. A groomsman tied a white cloth over Michael's eyes in the vestibule and walked him in by the hand. He stood at the altar rail beneath the crucifix, blind, with a friend's hand on his shoulder to keep him oriented — and then Annika came up beside him and put her hand into his before he was allowed to look.
Before any of that, the two of them sat down together in a pew. Heads bowed, hands folded, his eyes still covered, hers already shining. They prayed first. That's the frame I'd pick out of this entire wedding if I had to keep one — and I shot it from a distance, from the next pew back, because getting closer would have cost more than it was worth.
The groomsmen, meanwhile, were running their own blindfolded version of the bit off to the side, leading each other down a staircase by the hand. Reverent and ridiculous inside the same ten minutes. I'd learn over the next four years that this is simply what this family's weddings are like.
AfternoonA Catholic Nuptial Mass at St. Joseph's
The ceremony was a full Catholic nuptial Mass at St. Joseph's in Crosby — a white barrel-vaulted nave, a painted arch over the sanctuary, a wooden crucifix anchoring the whole room. I shot the processional from the balcony: the crucifer and the priest coming up the center aisle first, then two flower girls in rust and marigold with lace baskets, then Annika at the back of a very full church with every head turning at once.
Their friends sang it. A group of the bridesmaids and groomsmen stood together under the arch with sheet music in their hands and carried the music themselves, which is a completely different sound in a room like that than anything coming out of a speaker. The priest preached, the incense went up, and the host was elevated at the center of the day.
They knelt through the liturgy. Michael lifted her veil at the altar. The first kiss happened under the crucifix with the priest beaming over their shoulders and the whole bridal party lined up on either side. And afterward — the detail I think about most — the two of them went and knelt at the side altar in front of the statue of Mary, her veil and train spread out across the carpeted step behind her, doing something that had nothing to do with the photographs or the guests.
Meanwhile a flower girl had pressed herself against the glass of a wooden door at the back, hands flat on the frame, watching the whole thing from outside it. I love that picture. Half the congregation was having the experience she was having; she was just the only one honest enough to put her face against the door.
Reverent at the altar one hour, kneeling on a dance floor in a maroon hoodie the next — Annika and Michael never once stepped outside their own day to perform it.
Late AfternoonPortraits Back on Serpent Lake
We came back to the house for portraits and the place did most of the work for me. Tudor gables, brick front steps, spring gardens just filling in, and a flat overcast sky that behaved like a softbox over the entire property. Michael dipped her on the stone steps with her gown and veil spilling down the stairs behind her. They sat on the brick steps with their foreheads together. At one point he wrapped his arms around her from behind and she quit trying to hold a straight face entirely.
The bridal party never made it thirty seconds without coming apart laughing — dusty blue and burgundy, pink and wine-colored bouquets, the whole group hitting the same joke at the same instant more than once. Those are easy frames to make when nobody's performing. I mostly just kept up.
EveningA String-Lit Reception at The Forty Club
The Forty Club in Aitkin sits under a canopy of string lights pulled from the walls to a single point in the middle of the ceiling, so the whole room reads like it's lit from one warm center. Their first dance was quieter than a performance — his eyes closed, her head on his shoulder, the head table behind them going soft. Then his mother took his face in her hand during the mother-son dance and looked at him like she was seeing every age of him at once. I slow all the way down for that one.
And then the night went somewhere I didn't see coming.
A row of Michael's friends came out in matching maroon hoodies, and Annika sat down in a chair in the middle of the dance floor, and Michael knelt and washed her feet out of a glass bowl. The whole row of them knelt down alongside him. Nobody announced it. The room just went quiet and leaned in, and I moved once, low, and otherwise stayed out of it.
Here's the piece that makes it legible: Annika and Michael came out of Franciscan University in Steubenville, where students live in small covenant communities called households, each with its own name and its own sweatshirt. The maroon ones say Guardians of the Divine Will. The navy ones say Handmaids of the Lord. At some point in the night Annika ended up wearing his household's hoodie over her wedding gown, and Michael ended up in hers, and they stood there together for a photo grinning like that was the most natural thing in the world. It was, to them.
Later the households closed around them in a huddle with hands on their shoulders and heads down, praying over the two of them in the middle of a reception. Annika's face in the middle of that circle is one of the two or three best frames I made all day.
After that the floor never emptied. The bouquet toss pulled in every age in the building. A guest in sunglasses commandeered a microphone. The room compressed into one arms-up shouting huddle around the couple, and I dragged the shutter until the lights overhead smeared into ribbons — which is exactly where a reception like this is supposed to end up.
Planning a Catholic + Forty Club Wedding in the Cuyuna Range?
If you're planning a Catholic ceremony with a separate reception — a Mass at St. Joseph's in Crosby and a party at The Forty Club in Aitkin is a shape I photograph often up here — Annika and Michael's day is a good argument for it. A two- or three-location day runs on a slightly different timeline than a single-venue wedding: you want a photographer who plans around the rhythm of the Mass, the drive between Crosby and Aitkin, and the string-lit dance floor at the end, so nothing gets rushed. For a wider view of the region, here's my guide to the best Brainerd Lakes wedding venues.
A note on geography, since it surprises people: Crosby and Aitkin sit in the Cuyuna Range — the Crosby, Ironton, Deerwood, and Aitkin corner of the greater Brainerd Lakes area. It's a quieter pocket than the big resort waters like Gull, and it counts as Brainerd Lakes for everything that matters, including no travel fees from me anywhere in the region. Whether your day runs from a family home to a church to a reception hall, I help build the timeline, scout the light, and shoot it mostly observed, with directed portraits worked in when the light's right.
Three Sisters, Three Weddings
Annika's was the first of the three, and getting asked back for the other two is the part of this job I'd never have predicted when I started. In December of 2025 I photographed her sister Melanie & Cole — a Christmas-week Catholic wedding with poinsettias at the altar and a Grand View Lodge ballroom afterward. Then in July of 2026, her sister Isabella & Ryan, back at Grand View, with a wedding party made entirely of siblings, a pair of flower-crowned donkeys at cocktail hour, and five hundred balloons over a dance floor the night before America turned 250.
Three couples, three different starting points. Annika and Michael met at Franciscan, and so did Melanie and Cole. Isabella and Ryan met right here at home — at St. Joseph's in Crosby, in high school, in the same parish where Annika got married. You start to recognize faces across the galleries: the same brothers and sisters and friends turning up in different suits, a few years older each time. It's a strange privilege to watch a family move through something like that with a camera in your hands.
More Forty Club weddings on the journal: Megan & Matthew's Christmas-week Catholic wedding and Loren & Caleb's January Forty Club wedding. If your date is still open, reach out — I photograph a limited number of Brainerd Lakes weddings each year, and the good dates fill first.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes — that split is exactly how Annika and Michael's day worked, and it's a common shape around the Cuyuna Range. They were married in a full Catholic nuptial Mass at St. Joseph's Catholic Church in Crosby, with a blindfolded first look at the altar, incense and the host elevation, and a quiet moment kneeling at the Marian side altar to leave the bouquet at Mary's feet. Then everyone drove the short stretch over to The Forty Club in Aitkin for the reception. I build the timeline around both locations — church light during the Mass, the transit between Crosby and Aitkin, and the dance floor at the end — so each part of the day gets the coverage it deserves.
St. Joseph's Catholic Church sits in Crosby, in the Cuyuna Range — the Crosby, Ironton, Deerwood, and Aitkin corner of the greater Brainerd Lakes area. It's a quieter pocket than the big resort waters like Gull Lake, and Crosby anchors the Cuyuna Lakes recreation and mountain-bike scene. For wedding purposes it counts as Brainerd Lakes for everything that matters, so there are no travel fees from me anywhere in the region, whether the day is at a church, a family home, or a reception hall like The Forty Club in Aitkin.
A full nuptial Mass usually runs around an hour; a Catholic ceremony celebrated without Mass is shorter. Annika and Michael's was a full Mass at St. Joseph's — processional, the homily, the thurible swung over the altar, the host elevation, vows, and a kneeling blessing. Because so much of a Catholic Mass is set, I shoot it documentary-style and watch for the moments between the formal beats: the blindfolded first look at the altar, the two of them kneeling together, the first kiss under the crucifix. I'd ask your own parish for the exact run-time, since it varies by church and by whether you're doing a full Mass.
When the ceremony is at a church and the reception is somewhere else — as Annika and Michael's was, St. Joseph's in Crosby to The Forty Club in Aitkin — the drive between the two creates a natural gap in the day. I build that into the timeline on purpose rather than treating it as dead time. On this day, portraits at Annika's family home anchored the in-between stretch, so by the time guests settled in at the reception the formal photographs were already done. Planned well, the gap is an asset, not a scramble.
The Forty Club Inn & Banquet Center in Aitkin is a long-running reception hall on the eastern edge of the Cuyuna Range, about twenty minutes from Crosby. Its banquet room takes a draped canopy of string lights beautifully — Annika and Michael's room had them radiating to a single point overhead, which gave the first dance, the mother-son dance, and a late, wide-open dance floor a warm ceiling to work under. It's an unfussy, locally rooted room that does what a good reception venue should: gets out of the way and lets the party take over.
Wedding photography in the Brainerd Lakes area generally starts in the low thousands and goes up from there depending on hours of coverage and what's included. A day like Annika and Michael's — a Catholic Mass, portraits, and a separate reception — usually wants enough hours to cover all three without rushing. Rather than quote a figure that may be out of date, I keep current pricing in my pricing guide and send it the moment you reach out. There are no travel fees anywhere in the Brainerd Lakes area, including the Cuyuna Range, and galleries are delivered in two weeks.
