Monica and Erik got married at her family's cabin on Bay Lake on a July Saturday — a circle of white roses standing on a platform at the water's edge, a sailcloth tent back in the pines, and a tunnel of sparklers on the grass once it got dark. I've photographed a lot of lakeshores up here. Very few of them belong to the bride's family.
That's the thing I'd want you to know before you scroll. Almost everything you're about to look at was made by the people standing in it. Her dad built the bar. Her family set the tables, hung the lights, parked the cars, and hosted their own daughter's wedding — which meant that all day long, the people I'd normally photograph sitting in chairs were instead carrying something. It gives a day a particular texture. Nobody was waiting to be told where to go, because they'd all been here since Thursday.
- SettingHer family's cabin, Bay Lake, MN
- CeremonyCircular white-rose arch on a lakeside platform
- ReceptionSailcloth tent, parquet floor, cafe lights
- Built by handThe bar, by the bride's father
- CloserSparkler tunnel at dusk
AfternoonA Cabin That Already Knew Everyone
Monica got ready inside the cabin and came down the deck stairs holding her skirt up off the boards, a bridesmaid watching from the doorway above her. It's a small thing, but it's the frame I always want from a wedding at a family place: a bride walking down the same stairs she's walked down her whole life, only slower, and in a different dress.
The details around her were the family's, not a rental catalog's. Teal and cream sola-wood flowers in mason jars. Escort cards standing in birch rounds someone had cut. A wooden welcome sign on an easel with eucalyptus laid across the top. Two vials of blue and tan sand waiting beside a glass vessel engraved with Song of Solomon 3:4. And back against the cabin, under a run of string lights, the bar her dad built — a heavy wooden workbench of a thing, wine glasses lined up along it, wreaths hung on the wall behind. He made the place where three hundred drinks got poured at his daughter's wedding. I don't know how to photograph that fact directly, so I just kept photographing the bar.
Late AfternoonA First Look in the Pines
They did a first look on the lawn between the cabin and the tent. Erik stood with his back turned, and Monica came up behind him and put a hand on his shoulder before he could brace for it. What I remember is how fast they stopped performing — one turn, one look, and then they were just laughing at each other in the dappled light, close enough that I backed up rather than moved in.
Afterward they read private vows to each other off a phone in a clearing with the ceremony chairs already set in the background. She read hers and lost the thread laughing halfway through. He watched her the entire time she was reading, which is the whole story of these two, honestly. Then the pines took over — the two of them standing in a clearing dwarfed by eighty feet of red pine, small in the frame on purpose, because that's how the property actually feels when you're standing in it.
Early EveningThe Dock, and a Lake Holding Still
The lake did the thing Bay Lake does on a calm July evening — went to glass, so that everything standing on the dock got a second copy of itself underneath. We used it. Monica leading Erik out over the lily pads with both of them doubled in the water. A twirl at the end of the dock. A kiss between the flower planters with the reflection running clean beneath them.
Then the whole wedding party walked out and I got the two frames I'd been hoping for since I saw the water that morning: nine people strung single-file down a dock over still water, mirrored top to bottom, and then the same nine with their arms in the air while Monica and Erik kissed at the end of it. You can't build that in a ballroom.
EveningThe Circle at the Water's Edge
The ceremony was on a wooden platform built out over the shoreline, under a full circle of white roses and trailing greenery, with open water and the far tree line behind it. Guests sat on the grass slope above. Monica came down the wooded path between both her parents, and every person in those white chairs turned at once.
They poured the sand together, two colors into one vessel, standing at a little table beside the arch. Erik took the microphone for part of it and Monica stood there beaming at him with her hands in his — that's my favorite ceremony frame of the day, and it's just her face. The first kiss happened inside the circle of roses with the lake filling the gap. Then he dipped her in the grass aisle on the way back out and the whole slope came apart laughing.
A minute later her dad caught her on the lawn and held onto her with his eyes shut. That one I didn't move for. Later, during the speeches, I turned around and found him again — out of focus in the foreground, wiping his eyes, while his daughter laughed and hugged somebody in the background. Both frames are in the gallery. They're the two I'd point at if you asked me what the day was actually about.
Her dad built the bar. Her family set the tables, hung the lights, and hosted the whole thing — which is why nobody at this wedding was waiting to be told where to go.
DinnerThe Tent, and a Pie Instead of a Cake
Dinner was under the sailcloth tent with the sides open to the water — white linens, the sola-flower jars, a head table with the lake glinting through the gap. The speeches ran the way speeches run when everybody in the tent has known the bride since she was small: a bridesmaid reading off a folded page beside the floral arch, and then a long hug afterward where neither of them let go on cue.
They cut a pie. Crumble-topped, on a wooden board, one knife between the two of them. It's such a small deviation from the script and it tells you everything about how this family does things — you serve what people actually want to eat, at the cabin, on a Saturday in July.
Then the parquet floor filled and stayed full. He dipped her under the cafe lights. His mom held onto him through the mother-son dance and looked up at him the entire song. And at some point Monica came off the floor with one arm in the air and a grin like she'd just gotten away with something, the string lights dragging into streaks behind her.
Last LightThe Dock at Dusk, Then Sparklers
Late in the evening the sky over the lake turned into something worth interrupting a reception for — a heavy bank of cloud catching the last of the light. We walked them back down to the dock and shot it as silhouettes, two dark shapes and a kiss against all that sky. It's the frame I'd hang on a wall.
Then they took their shoes off. They sat down on the end of the dock in their wedding clothes, put their feet in Bay Lake, and kicked up a wall of water — both of them laughing, her dress soaked at the hem, nobody caring even slightly. Those are the pictures you get when the lake belongs to your family and there's no one to apologize to.
The sparkler tunnel formed on the grass between the dance floor and the cabin, and they walked it hand in hand while everyone they're related to held fire over their heads. Halfway down, Erik picked her up without warning. She threw her head back laughing and grabbed his collar, and the string-lit cabin sat there behind them in the blue. That's the last frame in the gallery. I wouldn't change it.
Getting Married at Your Family's Cabin on Bay Lake?
Bay Lake sits in the quiet corner of the Brainerd Lakes — down by Deerwood and Crosby, east of the big resort waters. If your family has had a place out here for a couple of generations, you already own the best wedding venue you'll ever be offered, and Monica and Erik's day is a fair picture of what that looks like in practice.
The honest version: a cabin wedding isn't the cheap option, because you rent separately everything a resort bundles — tent, dance floor, lighting, tables, restrooms, catering setup, parking. What you buy instead is a place that already means something, and a guest list that shows up on Thursday to help. That trade is why these days photograph the way they do. Nobody's a spectator.
What I'd tell you to plan for: a late-afternoon ceremony so the lake takes the edge off the overhead light, a portrait window right before sunset while the water is still glass, and — genuinely — someone whose only job on the wedding day is not being family. Everyone here worked. Her dad built a bar and then tended a wedding at it. It's beautiful, and it's a lot to ask of the same people you want relaxed in the photographs.
For another summer cabin day in this same stretch of water, Molly & Josh's early-summer cabin wedding is the closest companion to this one, and I've written up the broader case in Why a Backyard Lake Wedding at the Family Property Often Works Better. A little north on the Cuyuna Range, Annika & Michael did the two-location version — a Catholic Mass in Crosby, then a reception hall in Aitkin.
If you're planning a Bay Lake summer at your family's place, reach out. I take a limited number of weddings a season and mid-July through August goes first.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes — and on the right property it reads more cinematic than a resort. Monica and Erik married at her family's cabin on Bay Lake, near Deerwood and Crosby in the Brainerd Lakes, with a circular white-rose arch on a lake-edge platform, a sailcloth tent among the pines, and a sparkler tunnel on the grass at dusk. What makes it work: a flat enough lakeshore for the ceremony, enough lawn for a tent, parking the family can coordinate, and people willing to live with the setup-and-strike rhythm — Monica's family did their own setup and hosting, and her father built the bar. Add event insurance and, if you can, one hired coordinator so your relatives get to be guests.
A sand ceremony is a unity ritual where two colors of sand are poured together into one vessel, so the layers can't be separated again. Monica and Erik wove one into their vows — two corked vials of blue and tan sand on a wood slab, an acrylic plaque inscribed with Song of Solomon 3:4, and teal and cream sola flowers as accents. It photographs cleanly because it's small, slow, and intentional — the kind of physical moment a documentary photographer can stay close to without staging it. A private-property setting tends to absorb a unity element more naturally than a resort altar does.
A backyard or private-cabin wedding isn't automatically cheaper than a venue, because you're renting individually what a resort bundles into one price — the tent, dance floor, lighting, tables and chairs, restrooms, catering setup, and parking. Monica and Erik's day shows the line items: a sailcloth tent, a parquet dance floor, and peak-to-pole cafe lights all came in as separate rentals. What their family saved, they saved in labor rather than dollars — they did the setup, the hosting, and the bar themselves, and her father built the bar itself. I'm the photographer rather than the planner, so for those numbers a wedding planner or tent-rental company is the right source. For photography, my pricing guide lays out the collections — they run from the low thousands up — and you can start a conversation any time through my contact page.
It's one good option rather than a rule, and on a private property a first look rarely feels staged — there's no audience and no logistics tail, just the two of you. Monica walked up behind Erik on a wooded lawn between the cabin and the tent, and the rest happened on its own, including a private vows reading from Erik's phone in a nearby clearing. The practical upside is that a first look settles couples who aren't used to being photographed, frees up the timeline, and lets the editorial portraits happen before the ceremony so you can go straight to your guests afterward. I shoot about 60% documentary and 40% editorial, so either way most of the day stays unposed.
On a mid-summer lakeshore I like a late-afternoon ceremony, around 4:30, when the lake softens the overhead light and the tree line ringing the property blocks the harshest side-light. The light stays warm through cocktail hour and tent dinner, then the strongest portraits come right before sunset — for Monica and Erik that meant walking down to the dock for a twirl and a silhouette kiss against a dramatic cloudscape over the water. The sparkler send-off lands last, at full dark, with the string-lit cabin glowing behind it. Exact sunset times shift through the season, so I build each timeline around the light for that specific date.
