Spontaneous wedding elopes at final Pickin’ Party

By Jacob Wheeler
Sun editor
Weddings are many things: celebrations of love, lavish parties and family reunions. Typically they are also meticulously planned and rehearsed, down to where the flowers and candles are placed, months before the vows are exchanging.
Not so for Megan Lewis, 38, and James Garfield Bartley, 31, both transplants from Detroit, who tied the knot in an impromptu ceremony at the Pickin’ Party on Memorial Day Sunday in front of over 500 surprised but joyous partygoers. With the exception of a few family and friends — though not all — the wedding came as a complete surprise to those attending the twentieth and final Pickin’ Party.
Photo by Don Miller

“The ceremony was almost totally on the fly,” reports Lewis. “Our only goal was that it be a surprise for as many people as possible. I feel like if you try to plan things too much, you could be very disappointed.”
Only a few people were in on the secret. Pickin’ Party host Patrick Niemisto had recruited the Reverend Daryl Lick, (a.k.a. Beach Bard poet Norm Wheeler) to officiate the ceremony. Don Miller was on hand to shoot pictures for what he thought would be a “family reunion”. (Miller, Glen Lake’s Hall of Fame former high school basketball coach, just retired from teaching and is launching his new career as a wedding photographer.) Patrick’s daughter, Maura Niemisto, and friends needed only five minutes to decorate the stage. Glen Lake senior Will Hendricks and recent graduate Emma Cook provided the music, after learning of the wedding only 22 hours prior to the ceremony. Wendy Martin surprised the bride with a beautiful bouquet. And Lewis’ friend, Anna Wassa, became the secret wedding manager, handing out programs to Lewis’ and Bartley’s families and supervising the cake detail.
“We thought it would be really fun, and there wouldn’t be any stress put on our families to do it this way,” said Lewis. “It was such a magical time for us in the way people came together, and it was so neat to see everyone so surprised. I remember looking out at the crowd and seeing people crying. I really struggled to hold it together myself.”
As for celebrating their nuptials during the final Pickin’ Party, Lewis says it was a good way to gather the whole family in one place, even if they didn’t know what was to happen. “The energy at that event is so incredible, and we wanted to piggyback on that. In addition, this was the last year of the party, so we really lucked out.”
The day of the wedding was sunny and beautiful. Lewis wore a dress that she had purchased online from J.Crew, and Bartley acquired his suit three days before the ceremony, the same day the couple picked out their rings. “I chose to buy a lab grown diamond,” says Lewis. “I think it’s really cool because neither people, nor the environment were harmed to make it.”
For the reception, Lewis and Bartley set up their big camping tent behind the Niemistos’ house and spent the rest of the afternoon with family and friends, listening to Pickin’ Party music, drinking champagne and eating from the picnic basket that friends offered as a gift. They received salutes and toasts from total strangers at the party, and also from many of Lewis’ colleagues and students from Glen Lake School, where she teaches chemistry and physics. Bartley, meanwhile, is a full-time student and also works at ODOM Re-Use.
Lewis grew up in Milford, and he hails from Rochester, but they moved up here to avoid strip malls and traffic. Her great grandparents, Isaac and Ann Clawson, were homesteaders in the logging camp on Pearl Lake, and she spent many childhood summers at the Empire Beach and playing shuffleboard at the Friendly Tavern. The newlyweds just recently inherited the home that her grandparents purchased in 1896 for $800 and in which they raised 14 children.
Lewis and Bartley met at the FireFly downtown on a true “blue moon” three years ago. They even have pictures of the moon that night framed in their house. She liked him right away but wasn’t looking for a relationship at the time. Fortunately, a couple mutual friends, Katie and Gretchen Deegan ensured that they stayed in touch. They maintained a long-distance relationship the first year because Bartley was living in Florida, and soon he decided to return to Michigan for school.
The Pickin’ Party surprise won’t be their only ceremony, though. Lewis had intended for her six-year-old daughter Grace to take part in the wedding, but she fell sick with a 100-degree fever that day. “We bought her a beautiful diamond heart necklace, as this was also about uniting us all as a family,” Lewis explains. “We intend to do a second family ceremony, just the three of us, at the top of Pyramid Point this summer to make sure she understands how much this union is a part of all of us.”