Marquette County Courthouse and Landmark Inn Wedding | Trevor and Kendall

This wedding was a special one for me because the groom, Trevor, is an old friend of mine. We’re from the same small town in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and I’ve known him and his family since I was a teenager. I was part photographer, part guest at the wedding. It was awesome to not only see my friend finally getting married to the woman he loves, but also to document those moments and create beautiful artwork for him and Kendall.

The wedding began at the Marquette county courthouse in Marquette, Michigan. Trevor’s dad, Tom, spoke briefly and prayed, and the ceremony concluded with a kiss and a dip.

There’s a lot of history in the courthouse itself. President Theodore Roosevelt once filed a libel suit against a newspaper publisher in this court, and it was a filming location for the 1959 Jimmy Stewart film Anatomy of a Murder. One of the coolest features of the courthouse is this grand marble staircase beneath stained glass windows. It worked as a backdrop for family portraits as well as making the perfect spot for this portrait of Trevor and Kendall.

Marquette is located on the shore of Lake Superior, so after we left the courthouse we headed down to harbor for some photos near the water and the old ore dock, a Marquette landmark dating back to the days when the city’s mining industry was booming.

The reception was at the Landmark Inn just up the hill from the lower harbor. It’s a elegant historic hotel with ornate furnishings. I knew from shooting here years prior that there was a room on the ground floor with tall windows that would provide beautiful light, so we stopped in there for a few quick portraits before going on to the reception room upstairs.

The reception was a casual, relaxed dinner with the bride and groom’s immediate families in the Sky Room, a lovely intimate space on the top floor of the Landmark, overlooking downtown Marquette.

The hallway just outside of the Sky Room had some light fixtures and vintage wallpaper that I knew I had to take advantage of:

Across the street from the Landmark Inn is another great location, the Peter White Public Library. We decided to take a walk over to the front steps to do a few more photos before calling it a (wedding) day. I started of with natural light, which was pretty good at that time of day, but of course I had to take it to the next level with some off-camera flash portraits.