A Marriage of Styles

It would be easy to assume that any wedding headed into a ditch might not have terribly bright prospects. But Ben Friesen and Kamie Page knew what they wanted for their wedding, and it didn’t include tying the knot in a highway median. The couple had a vision that incorporated the same native wildflowers and grasses you might see along a country road as you head up to northern Minnesota, where Ben worked as a naturalist. He also wanted invitations made out of a paper bag-like material. And he thought it would be nice to get married “under an oak tree—thirty people and done,” Kamie says. In the end, they went a slightly more modern route, and were one of the first couples to marry at the revamped Walker Art Center.

Melding native Minnesota wildflowers—or “ditch” flowers, in their personal wedding code—with the sleek modern aesthetic at the Walker was an exciting challenge, says Martha Gabler Lunde of Martha’s Gardens, who designed the flowers for the event. “We wanted to figure out how to bring it up to the Walker’s standards without making it country,” Lunde says. She found an ideal grower in Ryan Evans, an organic flower farmer in Viroqua, Wisconsin, and told him, “Let’s do organic, let’s do Minnesota, but let’s do something really cool,” she says. Lunde scoured the Twin Cities for colorful vases, and she filled them with coreopsis, daisies, brown-eyed Susans, and other organic flowers for the reception. The ceremony area was framed by two small apple trees and planters full of wildflowers and grasses such as limelight millet and foxtail grass set against one of the room’s bright red, blue, and gold murals. Colorful votives on the tables and along the windowsills completed the rustic but modern effect.

Two Classmates, Two Teachers
Ben and Kamie met in eighth grade at Minnehaha Academy, where they were both new kids. The two were just friends until their last year of high school, when he asked her to the senior prom. “I just remember being shocked,” Kamie says, laughing. The couple went on their first date near the end of high school, and they had an on-again, off-again romance throughout college, when Ben attended the University of Kansas and Kamie went to Notre Dame and then transferred to Northwestern University. Later, they stayed close but never quite seemed to be in the same city, until Kamie ended up back in the Twin Cities after getting her master’s degree at New York University. Living near each other again, and both pursuing teaching jobs—Kamie is now a fourth grade teacher and Ben is an eighth grade earth sciences teacher—the relationship was rekindled.

In October 2004, it became clear that the couple had reunited for good. Ben personalized a Ghanaian tradition and showed up at her parents’ home with a suitcase full of mementos that reminded him of her—a running shoe (they both ran track in high school and she played college soccer), a can of chicken soup (the kind her mother gave her)—and told them of the many reasons he wanted to marry her. Shortly afterward, he proposed during a snowy fall weekend at her parents’ cabin.

Vows with a View
Kamie and Ben set their wedding for July and knew they wouldn’t be able to cut off the invite list at 30. In fact, it ended up at 170. When they discovered the Walker was available, it was the first of many easy decisions. “From there, it was like a perfectly put-together puzzle. Everything just went so well,” Kamie says. The ceremony was held within the bright, geometric Gallery 8, where colorful Sol LeWitt murals cover most of the walls. They were married by Minnesota Supreme Court Justice Alan Page, Kamie’s father and a former Vikings football player. The ceremony featured a jazz flutist and saxophone player, and Dennis Spears sang Stevie Wonder’s “Stay Gold.” After the ceremony, Kamie, Ben, and their guests headed outside to the terrace, where they enjoyed cocktails while looking out over the sculpture garden and the Minneapolis skyline. Dinner was served in the Skyline Room, which offers even more dramatic views of the city through its asymmetrical windows. Wolfgang Puck catered the event and  pleased all tastes with a Southern food station and a Chinois station. 

The night before the wedding, the couple invited guests to Salsa a la Salsa for the rehearsal dinner. The temperature outside lingered around ninety degrees while inside the air conditioning had broken. But guests quenched themselves with plenty of the Mexican restaurant’s margaritas. “People were just drenched in sweat, but it couldn’t have been more fun,” Kamie says. After the groom’s dinner, Kamie and Ben invited guests back to their house for badminton, bocce ball, and other lawn games. The athletic theme continued the next morning when guests met at the Pages’ home for a group trek around Lake of the Isles. On Sunday, guests celebrated during a brunch at Kamie’s parents’ home, where they released monarchs and took rides in a 1906 Buick built by her grandfather.

Forging Their Own Path
Throughout the wedding process, the couple wasn’t afraid to break from tradition. They decided not to have bridesmaids or groomsmen and to instead recognize their friends and family in other ways. “For simplicity’s sake, it was just easier,” Kamie says. Her grandfather escorted her down the aisle after her parents walked down together—they had eloped to Las Vegas when they were married and never had their own wedding. There was no cake; instead, small desserts such as mini tarts and homemade cookies catered to individual tastes. The program for the ceremony was written with colored chalk on a blackboard Ben had made for Kamie. And the first dance was anything but the traditional ritual of a groom leading his bride in a waltz surrounded by guests. They had hired a DJ friend, Aldric Zaccardi, to spin during the wedding reception, and when Ben and Kamie returned to Gallery 8 after dinner, Ella Fitzgerald was singing to an empty dance floor. The couple enjoyed their first dance by themselves. “It was so romantic,” she says. “It was like a special little treat to ourselves.”

The wedding’s hip but laid-back vibe carried over to the attire as well. The bride wore a flowing floor-length ivory silk dress from J. Crew, with an empire waist and V-neck in the front and back. A friend of Kamie’s mother personalized it by adding beading around the waistline and the bias of the skirt. Tiny buds and daisy blossoms were scattered throughout her hair, and she carried an armful of wildflowers as a bouquet. Kamie’s mother wore a gold French silk lace dress that was created in the early 1900s for Rose Palmer, of the Palmer House in Chicago. And even Ben’s suit had a story: He wore a gray suit he had custom-made in Thailand while he was teaching earth science in a remote village for three weeks last spring. He wore a white shirt, no tie, and a daisy boutonnière.

Although their early plans were for a small outdoor wedding, Kamie and Ben were happy with how the stylish setting of the Walker melded with the prairie theme, and she says the wedding fit their personalities to a T. “I will always remember that weekend,” she says. “It exceeded our expectations in every way.”