Destination Wedding in Kenosha, Wisconsin
Sometimes all you need is one small chance to meet your soulmate. A blink of an eye can change your life forever. That’s exactly how it went with Eva-Lotta and Harrison.
Their wedding took place in the charming lakeside town of Kenosha, Wisconsin — just north of Chicago along the shore of Lake Michigan. I immediately fell in love with the town: the nature surrounding it, the crisp autumn weather, and the warmth of the people around me. It was mid-October, just before Halloween, and the fall colours were at their peak — golden and amber leaves everywhere, pumpkin fields stretching to the horizon, and that particular Midwestern light that makes everything feel like a film. I spent a week with these beautiful people, and it was quality time in the truest sense.
What makes this wedding especially close to my heart is the Estonian-American connection. Eva-Lotta is from Estonia, Harrison from Kenosha. Their wedding brought families together from both sides of the Atlantic, and the most important thing to the couple was making sure as many of Eva’s relatives from Estonia could attend. As a photographer from Estonia myself, being part of that bridge between two worlds felt meaningful.
Harrison’s story — how they met:
“Eva and I first met on Wednesday, November 23rd, 2016, in my hometown of Kenosha, Wisconsin. Looking back on it, we both realised how close we were to never having that encounter. I was coming back home for the weekend from South Dakota and had barely escaped a bad snowstorm which could have cancelled my plans to arrive on Wednesday. Eva, who was at university in Florida, had just managed to convince a professor to reschedule an assignment so she could accept a spontaneous invitation to her teammate’s home for Thanksgiving break… in Kenosha. Her teammate just happened to be my best friend and future best man’s sister.
I’ll never know how lucky I am to have a best friend like that, because pretty much as soon as he saw Eva he was texting me nonstop to meet a ‘girl from Estonia… Dude… get over here NOW.’ The rest is pretty simple: he was right. Eva and I fell in love and I proposed to her on November 8th, 2017.
What wasn’t that simple was coordinating everything for our wedding. The most important thing for us was to make sure as many of Eva’s relatives from Estonia could make it. Although we had to wait until fall, we had no idea how beautiful a day October 19th, 2018 would be.
Every moment of the day — from waking up, to getting ready with my guys, having our ceremony, to the last song of the reception — I was thinking about how grateful we were to have everyone there. Reflecting back on that day, I can remember Eva being so happy to have all of her family and friends that she hadn’t seen in over a year. One of my favourite moments was during the middle of the reception, with the dancefloor erupting, when we both snuck back to a table in the back and just took the whole scene in. It was a great mental snapshot.
All in all, we couldn’t have asked for a better time with everyone — only that it would have lasted longer. As we created a new family of our own in marriage, we have learned to love each other in new ways every day, which makes me even more thankful to have been at the right place at the right time, November 23rd, 2016.”
