Founder
Pittsburghs Circus Arts Collaborative
In 2017 Mike Willis had the singular idea of providing the ultimate couple with the ultimate wedding.A wedding that would also be ... a circus. Being president and owner of both Modern Era Weddings and Pittsburgh’s Best DJs (two multi-award winning entertainment companies) Willis found he had, already in place, the resources required to make this happen - the very connections he had accumulated through years of involvement in Pittsburgh’s entertainment scene. Willis soon partnered with Shipwreck Asunder (a person responsible for the novel beginnings of a myriad local experience) and together they gathered as many of Pittsburgh’s circus performers as they could - put them in a room and asked, simply, “do you think you could make a wedding?”In that room, in 2017, at the offices of Modern Era Weddings sat a crowd of strangers. Strangers that could juggle, that could bend, that could breathe fire! Strangers that could stilt walk, that could spin 20 hoops on their body at once! Strangers that swung from silk straps and trapeze bars! Strangers that could stand 2 - no! 3! tall on each other's shoulders! Strangers who could shoot a flaming arrow from a bow as they stood on their hands and shot - with their feet!Strangers who, somehow in this chaotic world, believed enough in the power of love to create circus weddings and turn from strangers into family.Mike Willis is responsible for that.