photos: Audrey Hall

We met on a scuba diving boat in Santa Barbara, California, but knew we wanted to get married in Montana whete my family has had a ranch since I was about eleven years old. We wanted the wedding to be at Heritage Ranch—on the banks of the Yellowstone River—and the reception to be in the 100-year-old barn.

I met my family about a month before the wedding as part of the “get-the-ranch-ready advance team.” Billy came up about 10 days before the wedding and we put him right to work We power washed the old horse barn, shooed out the birds, put in electricity, poured a concrete floor and painted the inside. We moved the big, round hay bales to make medieval cairn-like structures, capped with flags embroidered with both Billy’s and my names.

We worked with local event coordinator Anita Pagliaro to decorate our barn in a combination of Western ranch and Celtic. We went with a gold and ivory theme. We covered the tables with pale green satiny linens overlaid with an ivory striped sheer. On the same theme, we hung cascading green and ivory floral arrangements from the barn ceiling and used the same floral theme for table decorations. The look was both festive and whimsical...down to a black-and-white Holstein cake.

On the day of the wedding, Billy wore a custom-made buckskin suit. My dress was an ivory gossamer with long draping sleeves—like angels’ wings—and real buttons going up the back. I made my headpiece to go with the silk flowers on the dress.

My dad drove me to the ceremony in our 1968 red farm truck. The ceremony was in a white, hexagonal canvas tent right on the banks of the Yellowstone River with the Absaroka Mountains in the background. Anita decorated the tent with twigs, bark, flowers and other natural materials. The guests sat on hay bales covered with white burlap sacks.

Our ceremony incorporated the mythology of this unique place and ended with an old Irish and an Apache wedding blessing. Then we went up to the old barn for the reception. It was a magical weekend.

— As told by Nickie Lange