I am SO excited to share this engagement/family session with you! For many reasons, actually. First, because Kyle, the groom, is my first cousin. Second, because their daughter, little miss Nora Megan Thering, is about as adorable as they come. Third, because we took these photos at some fun locations around in Baraboo, WI (think, Circus World Museum). And finally, because Aron, the bride, is also a photographer and planning an uber creative Off-Beat New Years Eve wedding (at which we get to do a photobooth, yay!). So you can see the combination of those reasons has me excited beyond belief for their wedding!
So, anybody who grew up in South-central Wisconsin went to Circus World Museum at least once or twice as a kid. I remember going there for school field trips and a few times with my family. What I remember most was a big scary mechanical gorilla in a cage that you could go into and get your photo taken with. Traumatic if you ask me. Since Kyle & Aron are getting married in Baraboo at the Ringling Theater, we thought starting the session at Circus World would be appropriate.
I could not dig up any photos of me with the gorilla (maybe because I was too scared to actually do it, who knows). But I did dig up these beauties. I’m on the left and my sister is on the right. Why my poor sister got stuck in the big man cut out I don’t know, I just remember being happy that I got the pretty girl with the snake! The photos below are circa 1987 or 1988ish (I think).
And look! They still have the cut outs! We didn’t find the lady with the snake but look at the photo in the top right, they have a modern version of the big man! We also found a bunch of others and couldn’t resist putting Nora in them for photo-ops. 
Then, we proceeded to do a bunch of family photos because Nora was in such a wonderful mood and her dress couldn’t have been any cuter. See?
But since this was an engagement session, we were sure to do some of Kyle & Aron alone, too…
Then we quickly switched gears because we were loosing light and wanted to head over to Devil’s Lake for some photos as well. That is where we met this handsome fella, their “other child” Weston. Freshly groomed and sporting a coordinating collar, he was ready for photos!
We tried to get a bunch of full family shots like this:
But we ended up with a lot of these:
Nevertheless, we carried on and we were on a time crunch! The sun was fading fast and we still needed to climb the hill they hiked on their first date to take some sunset photos. So we quickly took some photos of Nora and mom:
And Nora & dad:
And Kyle & Aron alone before handing Nora and Weston off to the babysitters so we could make the hike.
It took us awhile and it was a steep, sweaty hike to the top, but we made it just in time to catch a few colors in the sky before the light completely faded!
And since we had our lights out already, we played around and got a few dramatic night shots as well.
If you can’t already tell, we are greatly looking forward to the Meudt-Thering wedding!!
