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!

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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!

Joanna's Rustic Carnival Theme Bridal Shower

Recently I attended my friend Joanna's bridal shower. Her sisters Carly and Bryne created an adorable carnival themed shower that was laid-back and kid-friendly. I wanted to share the details, as well as capture the day for Joanna.

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The bridal shower was held at the home of one of her bridesmaids in Rathdrum, Idaho. The song lyric "over the river and through the woods" summed this location up just about perfectly! It was a hidden gem in an otherwise residential neighborhood. I couldn't believe how beautiful it was; I envy Audrey for getting to wake up out there every morning! The surroundings were so rustic and earthy, I loved it!

The bales of hay really did double duty by adding to the carnival vibe and providing extra seating. Some of the kids put on a puppet show for entertainment using the elaborate puppet show stage.

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JoJo's mom and a family friend worked the food both. They served fun carnival themed food -- corndogs, popcorn, bags of peanuts and corn on the cob. They also did prize giveaways of gourmet treats!

The yard was filled with funny wedding related carnival games. The resident puppy especially loved the "Cake in the Face" game, because it meant he got to sneak over and help clean up the cupcakes and frosting that people were throwing!

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My personal favorite detail was the fun face-cut-out prop of a bride and groom. That's Joanna as the bride and me as the groom!


This is Joanna with her newly married twin sister Carly. Of course they were maids of honor for each other.


JoJo's sister Bryne and a friend made these sweet treats as a parting gift. What says carnival more than caramel apples? Yum!

Our engagement session with Matt Shumate!

First off, I just want to let everyone know that I plan to post a TON of wedding stuff in the next couple of months. Our wedding is in just a few days, and wedding planning has just been far too insane for me to blog all about it. We have worked so hard to make things come together, and I am so excited to share all of our wedding details with everyone!

Now I want to share our engagement session photos with Matt Shumate!

Our original plan was to have our engagement session done at the county fair. We thought it would be fun, and there would be built-in props and cool background lighting. Unfortunately, my beloved great-grandmother died a few days before the fair. Since the fair only comes once a year, we were going to try to struggle through it, but when Matt heard my voice he told me that I was way too stressed, and that we should wait until I was feeling more up to it. I'm glad that we did, because (as you can see in the photos), it was a lot easier to smile and laugh than it would have been.

Matt is a great guy, a very creative photographer, and about the furthest thing from a diva artiste as you can get. For those of you who know me, or who have been reading my blog long enough, you'll know that I tend to be very sassy. Matt lobbed it right back at me, and we all had a good time. (Except for the weather. It was gray, chilly, windy as all hell, and rained on us for the last little while.)

Please forgive my windblown hair and chubby laughing face, but I still think the pictures came out pretty cute. I especially like the ones of Dylan laughing, and these:







Please think good thoughts for us this week, and keep your fingers crossed for our big day! 10-9-10 here we come!

Many more wedding details to come soon!

Cute wood-grain faux bois save the date cards!

I was just looking on the minted. website and found thesed adorable save the date cards that I wanted to share. I've been obsessed with faux bois (wood-grain) patterns, so of course I was happy to find these!

They're called Fall Carving Save the Date Cards by Amanda O'Rourke, if you want to find them on their page.

I couldn't link right to those cards, but I did find this banner that shows the cards, and a code to get 5% off your purchase! Yay for saving a little money!

I hadn't looked at minted. before. I was impressed by their variety. They do everything from save the dates, invitations, menus, bridal shower invites, and thank you cards to custom calligraphy and custom letterpress designs. They even have an eco-friendly line. Some of their stuff is way out of my league price-wise, but they do have cute stuff that is within my budget. For example, those save the dates are $163 for 100 of them. Not bad at all! (Plus, a lot of their save-the-date examples have the name Aly on them. Maybe it's a sign!)

Since it's getting closer to the holiday season, I'll also mention that they do a lot more than wedding stationery. I was oogling some of their holiday menu designs and thinking that if I were more well-to-do / fabulous, I would like to have those for every party I ever hosted.

Here is a really sweet wedding menu option:


Those are called Charmed Menu Cards by Oscar+Emma Design. I love the initials dangling like charms with the little thank you note tag at the top. Plus, I've always liked dogwood flowers.

I just wanted to share a cool new find, but I ended up liking their stuff enough that I decided to sign up so I could link to them. If you click on one of the links and end up ordering something, I guess they'll send me like a quarter. Yeehaw! If I get kick-back for spreading the word about stuff I think is cool, that will make my day.

One last thing:
If you're in the market for holiday photo cards, they have a 15% off holiday card discount for early shoppers. Real Simple even calls them their favorite resource for personalized holiday cards. The code is EARLYSITE09 and it expires on 10/18, so hurry!

Have a great weekend everyone! We plan to live it up for Dylan's last weekend of funemployment. By live it up, I actually mean sit together on the couch a lot. We've rented a bunch of movies, we're stocked up on popcorn and Halloween candy, and almost everyone we know is out of town or stuck working this weekend. It's feeling like a hermit weekend. I'm kind of looking forward to it!

Green, Brown and Acorn Wedding Theme

I know it's been a while since I've posted an inspiration board, but it's because I have had a mental block. I've been really straining my brain trying to work with some colors and details for our wedding, which seems to require an extra effort. It's fun and a little easier for me to detail color palettes for inspiration, but a little more tricky when I decided to incorporate some of the specific elements we plan to use.

Here are some of the goals for our wedding:

We want autumn warmth, without being cliché. That means no pumpkins, and avoiding the more traditional orange, yellow and red palettes.

We love the symbolism of acorns and oak trees, so we want to feature them in our details, but in cute and hopefully not cheesy ways.

A little DIY craftiness is a plus, because it emphasizes heart-felt sentiment when you know that someone put the time and effort into making it themselves.

Here are some of the things we're going for:

cozy

expressive of our personalities (go ahead, you can call us "nuts")

intimate

rustic
woodsy

sentimental

romantic

elegant

comforting

celebratory

So what do you think? What comes to mind when you look at this board?

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The green oak leaf menus, the green napkins with green acorns, and the pinecone and acorn boutonnieres are from Michelle Rago.

The oak branch candle holder centerpieces, the acorn cakelettes and the acorn ornament are from me. The acorn cakelette pan is from Williams-Sonoma.

The acorn boutonniere in the top right corner is from Martha Stewart.

The bowl of green acorns was photographed by Kathryn Kleinman.

The chocolate tablecloth is what we're supposed to receive in the mail any day now. The green fabric is a sample of what we're considering for an overlay.

The lime green twig ball pomander with mini leaves is from Modage Floral on Etsy.

The green paisley fabric is a close-up of a Brioni handmade silk tie from europeansilkcompany on eBay. We love paisley, so I'm thinking about splurging on it for Dylan.

I don't know who made the chocolate cake, but it looks delicious so I thought I'd use it as an example of our desire to serve delicious comfort foods. (To my future mother-in-law Jinx, who can't eat chocolate: don't worry, we will have some kind of cake that you can eat, too!)

The tufted moss ring pillow is actually a really great DIY project from Once Wed. I love the faux bois ribbon around the edge, but you can customize it however you'd like!

Adorable Woodsy Rustic Wedding Finds!

I've been on the prowl for some aisle decorating ideas since I posted last. Since then, I've found a couple of great woodland decorating details that I wanted to share.

For starters, I found a simple solution to the "How do I decorate an indoor aisle when there are no pews to attach decorations to?" issue. There's a website called saveoncrafts that has really great prices on almost anything you'll need for wedding decorations. On that site, I found what they call an Iron Tulle Stand (or wreath stand) that would allow me to put up decorations without worrying about jabbing anything into the ground (not an option for an indoor wedding), putting the decorations on the floor, or attaching things to chairs (not so simple if you're using chair covers). Maybe everyone else already knew about these, but just in case there are some other brides out there who have been worried about the same thing, I thought I'd share the discovery.


Next, I'm excited to have found these adorable Lime Green Twig Ball Pomanders with Mini Leaves from a LOCAL artist via Etsy! Modage Floral is right in Coeur d'Alene (only about a half an hour from Spokane, for those of you who aren't from around here.) It was pure coincidence that she's local, but it just makes it that much cooler of a find for me!

I got excited when I saw them, because I love pomanders and kissing balls, but I was having mixed feelings about how many flowers you have to use to make them. These would go great with our theme, and they might just be a great option for our aisle decorating dilemma! Hooray!

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Thanks to the wonder of Craigslist, we also found these cute twig and moss baskets. It's a little hard to tell from the picture, but they're actually wooden boxes that are decorated on the outside with twigs and baskets. Lin (the woman we bought them from) just put a potted plant in each box, then topped them with some artificial moss to fill them out. I'm not sure what we'll end up putting inside of them, but I'm excited to use them for some general decoration around the room. We also bought a bunch of the hurricane glasses pictured, because we want lots of candlelight! Thanks Lin!

I bought some of the chocolate brown tablecloths I mentioned before off of eBay. I ended up buying them for cheaper than it would've cost to rent them! I also bought a couple of sample napkins from an online store, so I'm excited for everything to arrive so we can put together some color combinations and try to narrow down our color palette.

There are several local bridal events in Spokane this week that I'm excited to check out. If you're one of the local brides that reads my blog and you'd like to know what I'm talking about, please feel free to drop me a note and I'll fill you in!

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!

Aqua and Orange Wedding

I keep seeing the color combination of aqua and orange lately, and even though I'm not always big on orange, I love this palette. I have found so many great pictures, I think I may even make this a two part theme! I also included some dark brown accents on this board, but you could really play with this palette to customize it for spring, summer, or autumn.

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Some of my inspiration came from a really fun, whimsical circus themed wedding that was captured the photos of Josh Goleman. The details are great, including a kissing booth and the bride wearing a super short and flirty dress that you can almost picture up on the highwire. I'm also loving this trend of 'photo booth' style shots of wedding guests in funny poses or with interesting props. When we find a photographer, I'm going to have to see if we can make arrangements for something like that!

Another website that has some fantastic inspiration is amorology. I just discovered it recently, and it's definitely one of my new favorites. She recently posted a wedding with yellow, orange and aqua that I'm going to try to incorporate more in part two of this theme.

The cutesy eyelet lace look L-O-V-E sign, and the guest books in the lower right corner are from Darling Dexter, as are these color coordinated napkins:

Whitney (the voice of Darling Dexter) and her husband Dustin had a beautiful wedding with this color palette and tons of lovely DIY details.

The rest is from Etsy! I always like to include some handmade crafts into my themes, and I found a ton of great stuff using these colors!

• The orange rosette and aqua beaded necklace (called Scent of Lisabetta) is by Sora Designs.
  
• The tangerine chrysanthemum ring is by Gingeroni1.
  
• The orange / aqua stripe tie is by MeandMatilda.
  
• The funky bib style crocheted necklace is called Summer Statement by DaintyCrochetByAly. (Maybe I'm partial because we share a name?)
  
• The invitations are called Mum Madness by Decadent Designs.
  
• The turquoise button with coral flower earrings are by Sincerely Beaded.
  
• The coral branches picture is by ara133photography.
  
• The Clara earrings by JLeeOhioDesigns feature tiny briolette faceted citrine and moonstone with large blue topaz. While they are more expensive than what I usually try to feature here, her jewelry is really beautiful and I have to give Jennifer props for being a proud ASPCA supporter. Me too, Jennifer!
  
• A more budget friendly option could be the aqua chalcedony and orange carnelian drop earrings by The Gem Shoppe.
  
• I also think this Festival Felt Button Bracelet by Poor Robin is really cute with this theme:
  
  

I forgot to add this earlier, but I love love love these shoes with today's theme. They're John Fluevog Men's Rusnak in Vegas Dark Brown. I'm always happy when I can include some cool shoes or accessories for the guys!

Rustic Wedding with Birds and Acorns

I've been brainstorming over the last couple of days about our own wedding. Part of me imagines something very classy and elegant. While we are most definitely on a budget, I do have a keen eye for detail and I am a budget-shopper like you wouldn't believe. The other part of me loves quaint, charming and quirky. I'd like to be able to incorporate both elements, but it's a little harder than I would've imagined to find a good balance of both.

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Here are some of the key elements that I wanted to include in this inspiration board:

We live in "The Evergreen State" (Washington), so it's easy to imagine a woodsy element for our wedding. I'm a little too girly to go for full-blown rustic, but I like the idea of rustic with a touch of crafty cuteness. (Etsy, here I come!) I included pictures from Suzi Q (upper left corner) and Josh Goleman (lower right corner) to highlight a feeling of rustic elegance and whimsical romance.

Speaking of rustic elegance and crafty cuteness, I love these Penny Loves Kenny shoes! And they're less than $40!

As is probably apparent by now, I'm mildly obsessed with lovebird themes. I found the cute lovebird cake toppers at RedLightStudio on Etsy. The love bird ring nest is from Y&E Bridal on Etsy.

I designed the wedding invitation in the middle. It's harder to tell in this format, but it has a wood-grain background. I changed our names for privacy.

The acorn boutonniere, dessert tableau and the white chocolate speckled quail eggs are by Martha Stewart. I'm not sure how they did it, but they have a moss table covering on the tables that I think gives a great enchanted forest feeling.

If you saw my first inspiration board, you saw that we'd like to incorporate acorns into our wedding. When I saw this acorn cakelette pan at Williams-Sonoma, I thought they would make adorable wedding favors. I've baked them a few times now using different recipes ranging from a delicate maple flavor to a sweetly spicy pumpkin flavor. To add a little extra oomph, I brush the acorn caps with maple syrup and then dip them into raw turbinado sugar. (Although I didn't take this picture, or ever put my acorn cakelettes on the floor for a photo op.)

The oak branch and acorn candle holders retail for about $100 each, but I did some negotiating and I bought several of them for about a fourth of that! They're really high quality and heavy weight, and we're hoping to use them as part of our centerpieces if we can find a venue that allows us to use them. Otherwise, spoiler alert for friends and family -- you may be getting one of these for Christmas, or as a thank you for helping us with the wedding. Act surprised!

The earthy brown and green candy buffet is by Rebecca Thuss, one of the queens of event planning.

Rosy Copper, Mossy Green, Warm Brown

Some of the inspiration boards I've put together have been for us, while others have been for friends or just to have fun with different color combinations or themes. This is our current favorite for early autumn wedding. The colors are rosy copper, mossy green and warm brown.

I wanted to make an autumn inspiration board, but avoid the more stereotypical autumn decor (pumpkins, oranges, yellows, reds). It was important to keep a warm, cozy, autumn feeling. We love the idea of incorporating some flora and fauna with vintage romance. We especially love the lovebirds theme, and acorns because they're a symbol of good luck and potential for the future.

The emphasis for these boards:

• elegant
• vintage
• romantic
• whimsical
• woodsy

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My favorite parts of the upper inspiration board are the rich textures, the acorn boutonniere and the bouquet with succulents, scabiosa, roses and little tufts of feathers. And my ring, of course!

I found the adorable ring bearer's "nest" and flower girl's basket on Etsy.

We aren't religious, but we love the symbolism behind the Jewish chuppah, and the intimate space it creates for the bride and groom during the ceremony.

We'd like to have an outdoor ceremony, but I think my head would explode if we had to gamble on the weather. We're hoping to bring some of the outdoors in with elements like the oak branch and acorn candleholders (on the top row) and the woodsy decor.

So that's my latest take on an autumn wedding, I hope you enjoy it!