Jason and Joanna's North Idaho Wedding

Our friends Jason and Joanna got married on July 9th, 2011 in Bonner's Ferry Idaho. Yesterday I shared details of Joanna's cute bridal shower, so today I wanted to share some of my favorite pictures from their wedding. All of these photos were taken by Cali Jenae Photography. If you're looking for a wedding photographer, or someone to do your family portraits in eastern Washington / north Idaho, it looks like she does a great job and I know Jason and Joanna really liked her. Dylan and I have been wanting to do a fun, relaxed couple session, so we might have to give her a call!

{Click on any photo to enlarge}

JoJo with her sisters, Maggie, Carly and Bryne.
I love this one extra! Jason with all of the girls sending smooches cracks me up!

The talented Joanna made her own wedding cake! How crazy is that?! It looks so beautiful!

That location in Bonner's Ferry looks gorgeous. It covers all of the bases -- they get a picture with mountains, a picture with meadow, a picture in the forest, and even a picture with a river flowing behind them!

We just want to wish our dear friends the best! Jason and JoJo, we love you guys and we wish you a lifetime of love, health and happiness together! Congratulations!

Wedding planning is never simple.

Dylan and I went to a bridal event last night and had a lot of fun. There were quite a few different stores and vendors to check out. To encourage you to meet as many of them as possible, they gave you something that looked like a bingo card with names and logos. As you met with each vendor, they would mark off their square. If you successfully had all of your squares marked off, you turned in your bingo card to be entered in a drawings for prizes. Much to our delight, my name was drawn for one of the nicest gifts they were giving away! We received a gift basket with a bottle of champagne, champagne flutes, a variety of chocolates, and a certificate for $500 toward the venue rental of a historical mansion! I had actually tried to find the mansion online before, but they don't have a website up yet. They included a simple brochure with a couple of pictures that make this place look absolutely beautiful. There are just a couple of problems:

We already put a deposit down for Jacklin Arts and Cultural Center, and we both really like it as a venue!

The $500 certificate for the mansion isn't transferrable, so if we don't use it, it goes to waste. :-(

The coordinator of the mansion seems like a very nice man and encouraged us to come take a tour of the venue. We're thinking we'll tour the mansion, because really, who doesn't want a personal tour of a beautiful old mansion? If it somehow manages to be the perfect place for us (which is a long shot), then we'll have to really weigh our options. In the meantime, I'm hoping that maybe we'll be able to work out an alternative use for the certificate. Maybe our rehearsal dinner, or some other wedding related party?

So my overall reaction has been, "YAY and crap!" I really hope everything works out!

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I also wanted to tell all you brides-to-be about a great deal on Amazon today. Their MP3 deal of the day is The 99 Most Essential Baroque Masterpieces for only $1.99! They aren't all the best arrangements for some of the songs, but if you're looking for some nice background music before the ceremony, during dinner, or even your processional, this is a nice sampler. 99 songs for $1.99 is hard to beat! Even if you're not familiar with this kind of music, you're likely to recognize several of these tracks as songs you've heard associated with weddings before.

Some of Our Own Wedding Inspirations!

I have been a brainstorming maniac lately. I haven't had enough time to organize some of my ideas into an inspiration board just yet, but since these are personal inspiration ideas I figure it's okay to share them just as photos. If you've been reading the blog, you know that we want to include acorns and oak leaves into our autumn theme. These are some of the things we have so far:

These are the oak branch and acorn candleabra centerpieces -- they were our first wedding purchase!

These are the acorn cakelettes and the pan from Williams-Sonoma that I made them with. I made them with a spiced pumpkin bread recipe. I like to use real maple syrup to coat the tops of the acorns, then roll that part in raw turbinado sugar for texture. They're both delicious and adorable -- one of my favorite combinations!

These are some mini acorn ornaments that we want to incorporate into our wedding favors.

We don't have these tablecloths yet, but these are some of the linens we're considering. I've actually found them for purchase for only about $2 more than it would cost for us to rent them locally, so I like the idea of just buying them and then passing along the bargain to another bride after our wedding. I'm all for sharing a great bargain! We're trying to decide what other colors we want to use with the brown. We're thinking greens, but maybe also incorporating some champagne or some other soft color. We'll see!

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I'm also excited because today we're going out to Jacklin Arts and Cultural Center to have a meeting to discuss the possibility of using them for our venue.

Dylan took these pictures yesterday. They were set up for a local event (not a wedding) but I thought it was cool to see the main hall without all the tables set up.

We both like that this venue has history and character, unlike some of the more corporate event centers we've seen. Fingers crossed that we'll be able to work something out with them. I'll let you know, of course!

North Idaho Wedding Venue -- Jacklin Arts and Cultural Center

We had to run errands like crazy today -- we drove back and forth across town to everywhere from the airport to the hospital, and even ended up making a spur of the moment stop at a wedding venue. Nicknamed "The Old Church", the Jacklin Arts and Cultural Center in Post Falls, Idaho was a pleasant surprise.

This venue has the charm of an old church, but with modern updates and a lot more flexibility. There aren't pews in the main room (they call it the celebration hall), but there are hardwood floors, ornate windows, and the entrance even has a belltower! (They even let Dylan ring the bell, so he got a kick out of that.) This just might be our favorite venue so far.

The plus sides are that the building is unique and quaint, they allow you to pick whatever caterer you'd like, you can supply and serve your own drinks, and there are several different little areas for guests to mingle and enjoy themselves.

The down-sides are the distance (it would be a little bit further of a drive for most of our guests), the surrounding neighborhood isn't so great if we wanted any outdoor photo ops, and the chairs they use for events are a little modern and weird. I guess I'd have to look into some chair covers!

Overall, we liked it and it's definitely in the running!

This is the cute little patio around back.

We have visited a couple other venues recently, but I just haven't had time to post about all of them yet. Hopefully things will get less hectic soon and I'll be able to do some new inspiration boards, too!

Spokane Wedding Venue -- Bozarth Mansion

I mentioned the other day that we've been researching some wedding venues. Recently we took a tour of the Bozarth Mansion in northern Spokane, Washington. I took a few pictures of the grounds while we were there.

This is a picture of the mansion as we were approaching it.

This is the courtyard that I thought would be a pretty place for a ceremony.

The same courtyard from a different angle.

This is the wrap-around covered porch that they use as a small dancefloor, or as the place to set up the catering stations.

The Bozarth Mansion could be a really pretty outdoor wedding venue during the warmer months. The interior is pretty lacklaster, and without air-conditioning you and your guests would be sweltering with an indoor summer wedding. Since we're thinking about an early October date, this probably won't be an ideal place for us, but I did want to share some pictures for the other brides in the area who are researching!