Icy Winter Wedding at Shore Lodge

Ryan and I were high school sweethearts who fell in love by accident. We had been friends a long time before we started dating. Right out of high school Ryan enlisted in the Idaho Air National Guard while I moved to Oregon to start college, making the conscious choice to be together and focus on our relationship. After six years of dating Ryan asked me to marry him on a sleigh ride in Sun Valley, Idaho. Everything about that night was perfect. I always knew that I wanted to be married in the winter. People thought I was crazy when I told them we were getting married in February, but there isn’t anything more beautiful than Idaho mountains covered in snow. We wanted our wedding to be one big party. Ryan and I had already started our life together, but we wanted to celebrate our relationship with all our family and friends who had been with us on our journey. We found the perfect venue at Shore Lodge. We fell in love with the architecture and the frozen lake and snow-covered trees made the perfect backdrop for our ceremony. Brandi and Kim from Soiree Weddings and Events took our vision and turned it into the winter wedding I had always dreamed of.

– Bride, Megan

When Megan and Ryan met with us, their vision was clear: snowy, mountainy, rustic but not too rustic, and not overly femme. The beauty of winter weddings is the ability to use an astonishing amount of textures and candlelight…and so that’s just what we did. We started with velvet linens topped with runners to add some structure. Then we layered a beautiful juxtaposition of fluttery plates combined with pewter chargers and black and steel flatware. On top lay a menu with the same watercolor mountain scene from the couple’s wedding invites, paired with the most beautiful, but not overdone, centerpieces to add some softness. The whole look was the perfect mix of clean lines meets comfort and beauty. The finishing personal touch was the mini cinnamon roll at each place setting, telling the story of the couple’s weekly Sunday cinnamon roll date. And then finally, there was the most amazing antler circle arch- a nod to Ryan’s love of hunting- that was all the bride. She had this idea to create an arch made of antlers- and we couldn’t have thought of anything better, especially paired with the backdrop of an icy lake and snow-capped mountains (and yes, we opened the doors behind the arch just before the ceremony started, so the view was completely unobstructed!). All in all, it was the dreamiest and one of the most personalized weddings we’ve been lucky enough to be a part of.

– Boutique Planning + Design Company, Soiree Bespoke Weddings and Events