Callie & Jordan

Callie is a physical therapist, Jordan a middle-school band director. They met on a group camping trip on Pine Creek nine years ago, which is why the whole wedding happened four hundred yards from the spot.

They turned a wedding into a weekend because half the guest list was driving three hours or more, and a six-hour reception felt like a poor return on that. Friday welcome dinner, Saturday vows, Sunday pancakes.

The cost of that is real: three days of catering, four cabins, and a lot of coordination nobody sees. They cut the guest list to sixty to afford it and would do it that way again.

Sixty people, four cabins and a creek shallow enough to stand in, which most of the guest list eventually did. Callie and Jordan turned a wedding into a weekend: a welcome dinner on Friday, vows under a tent on Saturday afternoon, and pancakes for everyone still standing on Sunday.

If people are travelling to you, give them more than one evening. Everyone said the Friday dinner was their favourite part, including us, and it was the cheapest thing we did all weekend.