Alaska Heavenly Lodge

We booked Heavenly Lodge for a wedding venue, and I can’t say enough about how happy we are about it! The lodge and the grounds are beautiful. Cooper Landing is one of our favorite places. You’re near the turquoise Kenai river and Kenai Lake (world-class fishing, hiking, rafting, drift boating, birding!). The lodge is private, up off the highway, and has a big awesome kitchen.
As a wedding venue, Heavenly Lodge provides lots of flexibility and opportunity. There is a whole host of vendors that have serviced weddings there before, so you can make things easy and go with them, or you can do your own thing. You can find ways to save money because you’re not required to hire anyone else here. It was also really important to us to be able to spend a few days with family and friends so that we didn’t just have one overwhelming day of happiness that goes by in a blur. Having a private lodge-setting, allowed us to spend time with all of our family and friends several days before and after the wedding and draw out the good times! We also booked an extra day before the wedding so we could start prepping, which I would highly recommend.
Maybe most importantly, using Heavenly Lodge as a wedding venue meant we got Katy and Brian Borchers on our team! Katy and Brian (the Heavenly Lodge caretakers) are just wonderful to work with (and in general). They’re excellent communicators, answering every little question we had from the moment we booked with them. They’re very experienced at helping with weddings so they know what works, what things to watch for, but in a way where it’s comfortable to express your own vision for the day. They’re very professional and also realistic about what it means to bring a group of people to a lodge for big party!

We cannot describe a more perfect day than our wedding day! AHL was exactly the accommodations we were looking for in a true Alaskan wedding! Our late September wedding was forecasted to rain that whole weekend; however, the light drizzle, the gorgeous back drop of Mt. Cecil and the beautiful fall colors were absolutely magical!

We cannot rave enough about the Alaska Heavenly Lodge and its hosts. We rented the entire property for a few days (4 days, 3 nights for ~20 on-site guests + ~8 off-site guests) for our welcome dinner, wedding, and reception. The hosts were incredibly helpful, patient, and communicative throughout the 1.5 years that passed in between when we booked the spot and the end of the big weekend. It's not easy to piece together the details of a wedding site-unseen, and the hosts were instrumental in providing us with all the right advice and information to make the process relatively easy and affordable. Additionally, they were extremely helpful, responsive, and respectful throughout the event. They even installed a ramp to accommodate my grandparents! We worked with great local (mostly based out of Anchorage) vendors that we'd highly recommend to other couples, including those providing catering (Wes Masters Catering), photography (Chugach Peaks Photography), tent and dance floor (CBC Rentals), and flowers (Alaska Wholesale Flower Market). All of our guests raved about Alaska Heavenly Lodge, its hosts, and the vendors that we worked with! Everything went seamlessly. (Brides: Note that Alaska Heavenly Lodge has a basement full of rustic-themed wedding decor and vases that you can use for table centerpieces and other decorations. We made great use of these items without having to purchase any wedding decorations other than fresh flowers!) The space could not have been more perfect for hosting our intimate wedding, comfortably making non-catered meals in the beautiful kitchen, relaxing by the fireplace, having a group picnic off the porch, or taking a stroll out the backdoor of any of the gorgeous cabins. We feel that our wedding at Alaska Heavenly Lodge was every bit of miraculous. Heavenly is the right word to describe it. We cannot wait to return someday for an anniversary gathering!