Under the Skies

Ideas & Inspiration

Under the Skies

The scene: Ferryville, Wis., population 174, snuggled up against the Mississippi River between Prairie Du Chien and LaCrosse. It’s August, ice-meltingly hot and a long way from big-city resources. Could a Chicago account executive and a businessman from Ireland pull off a lavish outdoor wedding here? You bet—but not without a lot of planning, says wedding planner Nancy Flottmeyer, owner of Weddings by Nancy in La Crosse.

In the last few years brides and grooms seem to be gravitating to Wisconsin’s great outdoors for their celebrations. Planners say outdoor settings provide maximum flexibility and creativity, but also require fastidious attention to detail. Although Lindsey Clark and Declan Flanagan lived in Chicago, the bride wanted to come home and be married in her parents’ Ferryville backyard. Yet both wanted a celebration that catered to their sophisticated friends. “It started out on a simpler level, like they all do,” Flottmeyer says. That’s when the work began for Flottmeyer. Everything had to be brought to the site. Flottmeyer rented lined tents and had air conditioning and flooring put in; the bride ordered up a band from Chicago. Meals for the 210 guests had to be prepared on site—its remoteness made shuttling food impossible. The tent company did a site inspection and found the site anything but level: Flooring was installed to cover the undulating ground.

As Flottmeyer advised, the couple had a backup plan (a waterfront ballroom in La Crosse) in case weather frowned on them. A fleet of support staff, from servers, chefs and florists to construction workers and electricians, helped carry off what Flottmeyer says was a “flawless wedding” with one amusing glitch: the August heat melted an ice-carved cow. “It ended up looking like a scrawny lamb because the weather was hot. There are always unforeseen things in outdoor weddings.”

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