Esterbrook Church, Where Couples Go For A Perfect Wyoming Western Wedding

ESTERBROOK —The call from overseas did not surprise the pastor.

Just another couple who wanted to get married at the base of Laramie Peak in the little log church building with the bell and the 5-by-13 window looking out on the green meadow and mountain.

Welcome to Esterbrook Community Church, where cameras and bridal gowns are often seen, but a church body continues to worship in a greeting-card setting that they don’t take for granted.

As a wedding chapel, the picture-perfect structure continues to garner a world-wide reputation where from Memorial Day through Sept. 30 an average of 16 weddings occur on the weekends.

Pastor Kirby Kudlak said he gets regular emails and phone calls, sometimes leading to long-lasting relationships.

Just last week, Kudlak said, he got a call from an Italian couple who had found the church online.

“They said this is where we want to get married,” he said. “They are going to stay with us. And I am going to marry them Sunday afternoon (June 23) after church. And they are going to fly back out to Italy on Monday.”

A few years ago, Kudlak said he received a similar call from a couple in New York. The couple hadn’t made any real wedding plans, but asked if they could be married in the church. Kudlak agreed. Church members served as witnesses, a cake was baked, and the couple was wed.

“We get cards from them, and they’ve had two kids since then,” he said. “It’s very special stuff like that.”

Recent guest speaker, Pastor Ed Rafferty of Grace Fellowship Church in Douglas, and his wife, Tonya, told Cowboy State Daily, they, too, were married at the church a couple of years ago.

“We had a good friend of ours do the wedding,” Rafferty said. “I asked her to marry me in this church.”

And while the wedding bell may not be rung at every wedding, there is a bell in the little church steeple that was donated by Wyoming Gov. Robert Carey’s wife, Julia Carey, when the church was built nearly 80 years ago.

Functioning Church

Esterbrook Community Church is located some 30 miles south of Douglas on a gravel road in the historic mining turned ranching community.

The community is said to have been named after Esterbrook Creek in 1896, and the creek was named after a settler named Esther Cooper before that.

Over the years, professional photographers from far and wide have also made the church building a destination to add a classic mountain church scene to their portfolio.

Within the past year, Kudlak said he was contacted by a photographer who wanted to capture a special shot of the church and night sky. The photographer had timed the shoot so the stars would line up, and Kudlak kept the church open for him from 9 p.m. until 1 a.m. just so he could get the perfect shot.

“They have a picture they sent me of the church at night and the Milky Way is just right out there,” he said. “It is just spectacular.

While photographers flock to the church for its beauty, the 20-some core members of the church gather there to worship, taking seriously their role of being a light in the darkness.

The land and church structure belong to the Episcopal Diocese of Wyoming. In 1943, the diocese had its first service at a nearby lodge. A month later community members gathered to strip 100 logs to build the church building. While the building was completed in 1943, it was not officially dedicated until 1946.

Community Church Is Born

Esterbrook church member Frank Pexton, who lives “just over the hill” from the church building said his uncle was one the men who helped build the structure.

“It’s my heritage, almost,” he said. However, the building’s doors would be closed more often than not in the later decades of the past century. During these periods, the Episcopal Church would send a pastor there sporadically to officiate services.

The church’s renaissance began in the late 1990s. Kudlak and his wife, Beth, who were living lived in Casper, purchased a second home within shouting distance of the church and visited the church during their weekend visits. A friend who worked at a camp in the area filled in as pastor. But one day he told Kudlak he was being transferred and asked him if he would consider taking over. At the time, just five people or so attended services.

Kudlak decided to take on the challenge and became ordained as a deacon in the Episcopal Church.

“In 2004, we became just a community church because it’s always been a community church. There were people who didn’t come because it was Episcopalian. It needed to be a community church because that is really the essence of it. Nobody was Episcopalian up here at the time.”

Pexton said he has been coming to the church since the 1990s. Fellow member, Gene Cole said he also attends when he is living up in the area for about seven months of the year.

Winter Worship

The congregation swells to 50 people some Sundays during the summer. From October through Easter, church members meet in Kudlak’s house or another church member’s home because of the logistics involved in heating the log building.

“We have a potluck every Sunday, we talk and play games and we have a Bible study,” Kudlak said. “The winter up here is long, so it becomes a little more of a social gathering. It’s the core guys pretty much. We don’t have a lot of visitors in the winter.”

Health issues have forced Kudlak to think about the future, and guest preachers are scheduled through September as the church tries to discern the next steps.

Those who take the pulpit will have to know that if a herd of antelope or soaring eagle shows up in the picture window behind him — he might just want to pause the sermon.

“It kind of gives the preacher a little bit of a complex because we are all looking at the view there you know,” Pexton said.

Kudlak calls the building “unique.”

“You just look out that window and you can’t help to think of something greater than yourself,” he said. “The building is a very special building, but that is not what makes our church. It’s the people in our community that make it a real church.

“But it is a pretty nice place to worship.”

Contact Dale Killingbeck at dale@cowboystatedaily.com

Dale Killingbeck can be reached at dale@cowboystatedaily.com.