The Ceremony

Julie and Chad married at the historic Pioneer Church of Collinwood, where her great-grandparents, Charles and Lydia Johnson, had been married exactly 100 years earlier in June. “My great-grandfather was also the pastor there,” Julie explains. “The church is maintained but not active -- we were the first couple to wed in that church since 1920, when it closed.” Inside the tiny oil lantern-lit church, surrounded by hundreds of acres of fields in Dassel, 30 guests witnessed the ceremony, performed by Julie’s uncle.