A Summer-Camp-Style Wedding on the Shore of Silver Lake

Date:August 31, 2019

Maggie and Nick Shepard gathered their friends and family for a summer-camp-style wedding on the shore of Silver Lake in the Sierra Nevada.
The Kit Carson Lodge served as the perfect property for guests to access canoes, paddleboards and hiking trails, and their assigned cabins added to the atmosphere of a summer camp for grown-ups. Maggie’s lace gown perfectly matched the woodsy setting as she and Nick exchanged vows surrounded by towering trees. After the ceremony, while the guests headed to the reception, Maggie and Nick spent some time alone on the lake before making a grand entrance by canoe. To make that entrance, they had Maggie’s stepfather, brother, best friend and two of Nick’s closest friends push their canoe into the lake. “The metaphor of being launched into the water by these people we had selected was not lost on us,” says Maggie. “It is one of my favorite memories of the wedding.” Their friends and family banded together to make all the finer details shine. To prepare for the falling temperatures at night, Maggie’s aunt scoured thrift shops for flannel shirts, which guests could grab throughout the evening and take home. Maggie’s mom and stepdad, who own a farm in Kansas, packaged jars of honey embellished with the couple’s names and the phrase “Meant to bee,” which were placed at each table setting. No camp festivities would be complete without music. To commemorate Maggie’s background with the Girl Scouts, her family played “A Boy and a Girl in a Little Canoe” at the rehearsal dinner—before they even knew about the couple’s canoe plans. Continuing their tradition of personalizing popular songs at their weddings, Nick’s friends sang a rendition of “The Space Cowboy” by the Steve Miller Band, complete with references to the couple’s kitten and Sacramento home. As they danced the night away in cozy flannels, Maggie and Nick brought summer to a close by celebrating their new beginning.