High Life wedding
Molson Coors saves the day after coronavirus derailed plans.
The happy couple said I do on the steps of the Miller Inn.
The bride wore a full-length sleeveless dress. The groom wore the belt buckle his grandfather, Lowell Benjamin, received from years of working at Miller Brewing.
It wasn’t how Adam and Mary Kate Benjamin planned their June 6 wedding. But they wouldn’t change much about it.
The couple, both health care professionals, were engaged in 2018 and made arrangements quickly. They planned a wedding at St. Casimir in Riverwest. They put down payments on everything from a cake to the Women’s Club of Wisconsin, where they planned to hold the reception.
Coronavirus derailed all that. Molson Coors may have saved the day.
The Benjamins entered a contest sponsored by the brewery that offered couples whose wedding had to be scaled back, postponed or canceled the chance for a social-distancing-approved wedding at their homes. The prize package
included an officiant, a photographer, $10,000 to pay for a honeymoon or fees from canceling previous plans and limited-edition Champagne coupe cans of Miller High Life.
“Tears were shed,” Mary Kate said. “Now it’s tears of joy.”
In April it became clear to the couple that the wedding wasn’t going to happen the way they planned.
A bridal shower on March 8 was “the last time we were in a room full of people,” Mary Kate said. “Every week we canceled more.”
Adam, 29, and Mary Kate, 24, texted their entry the same day they emailed everyone on their guest list that the reception was also canceled.
The couple worked with the Molson Coors team so that they could have their vows blessed at the church. Rev. Jeffrey Haines, auxiliary bishop of Milwaukee, and the Rev. Tim Kitzke performed the blessing in front of immediate family only — about 10-20 people.
“Having a church wedding was very important to us,” Adam said.
They hopped on a trolley to the Miller Brewing campus, where they were married, surprised with a twotier wedding cake and toasted with Miller High Life. Kitzke serenaded the newlyweds with a rendition of the “Miller Time” jingle.
Molson Coors provided a Zoom call for those who couldn’t make the wedding.
Later, at a dinner in Shorewood, the couple received personalized best wishes from “Manitowoc Minute” comedian Charlie Berens on video.
The Benjamins carried the momentum, and the leftover beer, to Mary Kate’s parents’ house the next day, where they celebrated — at an appropriate distance — with family and neighbors on the block where Mary Kate grew up.
They’re not sure how they became one of three couples who were awarded the wedding prize, but Adam thinks a couple things put them over the top: They’re both in health care; they both love Milwaukee; and they each have a grandfather who worked at Miller.
Mary Kate, a medical laboratory scientist, thinks it might be the entry photos, which were taken by her mom on the brewery campus.
As quickly as they said “I do,” they’re also saying “goodbye.” The couple is moving for Adam’s job. He recently graduated from the Medical College of Wisconsin and will be a resident at the University of Chicago at NorthShore Hospital.