NISSWA, Minn. – An unexpected, 90-foot-tall guest crashed Brianna Sucik's wedding rehearsal.
The fierce storm that tore through the Brainerd lakes area a week ago, closing some of the state's best-known resorts and interrupting vacations, also toppled the giant silver maple onto the roof of Sucik's family home on the shore of Gull Lake.
As Sucik and her fiancé, Kevin Relf, prepped for their Saturday nuptials, the wedding party posed for pictures in the shadow of the maple's gigantic root ball. The minister even had some advice on tree removal.
Then they got on with the rehearsal.
"I think this is more my style anyway," said Sucik, a physician assistant from St. Louis Park. "I don't need anything fancy. I always said I wanted to be married on a hilltop."
Sucik and many Minnesotans like her have spent an unsettling week scrambling to adjust in the storm's wake — clearing a forest of fallen trees, tending to banged-up boats and battered plans.
Together, they're proving a point: On Minnesota's lakes, no matter what, the summer must go on.
The annual trip to the lake is a deep-rooted ritual for countless Minnesota families. This year, it's just that a little improvisation is required.