A Visit to the Palace

Hello lovely people, hope you are having a good week! I was lucky enough to go down to London on Tuesday with my Mom to see the Royal Wedding exhibition at Buckingham Palace and wanted to share the experience with you.

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The visit included a tour around the state rooms of the palace and a chance to see some of the Queen's Faberge collection as well as the Duchess of Cambridge's wedding dress, tiara, veil, earrings, flowers, shoes and cake, exciting!! I'm sad to say that we weren't allowed to take photos inside the palace but I can share some from the exhibition's website.

As you can probably see it was quite a dreary day in London (typical UK weather!) but we still had fun..

Buckingham Palace

Momma Cupcake

Back of the Palace

First of all I can't describe how beautiful the state rooms are inside, it was worth going just to see them! I had been many years ago but had quite forgotten how grand they were. Just to give you an idea, this is the Throne Room where the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge had their official photos taken (this was part of the tour):

Derry Moore

One of the staircases (we walked up this one!):

Derry Moore

Pretty amazing. The dress was on display in the middle of quite a big room so that people could walk round it and was set up with the veil and tiara. There was a video running of Sarah Burton (the designer) explaining how it was made which was really interesting, the amount of work that must have gone into it was phenomenal. All of the lace was hand appliquéd and the train of the dress was weighted in a precise way as to make sure that it kept its shape as she walked down the aisle. What struck me the most was how tiny Kate must be, the waist was so small! It really was beautiful to see, especially being able to see the detail in the lace close up.

As a lover of all things sparkly I really wanted to see the jewellery more than the dress and I have to say they did not disappoint! Her tiara was made in 1936 by Cartier and was platinum set with 888 diamonds! It was a gift given by the Queen's father to her mother who later passed it on to the Queen. Kate's parents commissioned her earrings from London jewellers Robinson Pelham especially for her wedding day.

I was also very excited to see the wedding cake which simply stunning. The handiwork that had gone into decorating it was just amazing, it consisted of 8 tiers, 17 cakes and 900 sugar leaves and flowers. 

I've compiled a little montage of photos from the exhibition website for you to see:

All photos from The Royal Collection

If you want to see more about the exhibition there is a video here. 

After all that excitement we headed to the cafe for a nice hot chocolate:

Love the chocolate crown on top!!

All in all an excellent day :) just wish I had access to the royal tiara collection for my wedding day!