Married in Milwaukee

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The Turner Hall Ballroom, which has been open for events pending renovation for the past couple of years, saw its last party for now Saturday, June 18 when several hundred friends and family celebrated the wedding of Julilly Kohler-Hausmann and Victor Willoughby Pickard III.

The bride's mother, Julilly Kohler, had spearheaded efforts to raise money to repair the grand room, damaged in a fire 70 years ago, and ignored until just recently. The city has told the Turners that it will not issue occupancy certificates for the room until substantial progress is made in reconstructing it.

None of this mattered to the revelers who quaffed Mojitos and beer and were served a dinner buffet ranging from Tandoori chicken to Potato Pancakes.

The festivities began Friday with a wedding rehearsal at Villa Terrace, followed by a picnic at Mitchell Park, where chef Mark Weber of Watermark restaurant, a Kohler tenant at the Passeggio on Brady Street, grilled seafood kebabs for 100. Although the weather was pleasant for Milwaukee (low '60's and light rain) visitors from Florida, Nevada and other states were conspicuous by their presence. They were the ones huddled over the grill, shivering. Snacks included Hummus and Baba Ganough from Au Bon Appetit, and sausages were Johnsonville Brats, a tribute to the Kohler family's Sheboygan County roots. Beverages included Sangria, which Julilly senior whipped up the night before in her Marshall Street home and Sprecher Beer. A rented van shuttled guests between the park and downtown hotels. (There was not a limousine in sight.)

All of the food was toted around town in a rented refrigerator truck, which solved innumerable logistical problems quite economically.

Saturday brought forth the wedding at Villa Terrace after which guests were brought to the Iroquois Boat dock at Clybourn Street for a tour of the river. Along the western edge of Jones Island, giant fan blades, some 120 feet in length lay on the docks, destined for a wind power plant somewhere out west. They had been manufactured in Europe and brought here by ship.

The poor naive souls from elsewhere asked "from what does the river derive its brown coloration?" and this led to an animated discussion of fecal chloroform bacteria, sewage overflows and such other topics common here.

After the boat ride the reception at Turner Hall, noted above, was held. The entertainment was by DJ Paul Finger. After midnight, when the party ended, DJ Finger, the mother of the bride and the author of this article adjourned to Art Altenburg's Concertina Bar where they closed the joint at 2:30.

Somewhere along that time the refrigerator truck was loaded up with leftovers (excluding the beer, which the groom hauled over to his hotel room from the picnic the previous day), and its contents were disgorged the following morning at a Good Bye Gathering at the Kohler residence. That party, scheduled to run from 11:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., instead ran until 9 p.m. at which time the exhausted remnants of the party adjourned to the nearby Three Holy Women Festival.

The bride is a fellow in doctoral studies in history at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, while the groom, a native of Pittsburgh is a doctoral fellow in media studies at the same institution. He is the producer of Media Matters, a radio program that discusses media matters. The program is not yet available in the Milwaukee market.

The celebrants were Marie Kohler (the bride's aunt) and her husband Brian Mani (the bride's uncle.)

Although Reverend Kohler and Reverend Mani are best known to Milwaukeeans as stage performers, they were able to pick up a divinity degree on the internet for only $15, which gives me an idea. The couple will honeymoon in Europe, and then head back to work.