Afternoon Tea Cake

Just a quick post to show you lemon and blueberry ring cake I made for afternoon tea with my Mom, Dad, Aunt and Uncle. The pink was perhaps a little bright but it all tasted good!

Photographer Booked!

Happy Tuesday! Hope you are having a good week so far, I've been baking this morning as I've got family coming round for afternoon tea, will post cake pictures later!

So last week we booked our photographer, our first booking for the wedding! Very exciting. However, finding a photographer was a bit of a minefield, there are so many out there, how to choose?! After trawling through loads of websites and looking at lots of gorgeous photos I decided that the best way to pick one was to ask around for recommendations. So I asked about and had a number of glowing responses and a shortlist! I asked a friend who is an amateur photographer to take a look at the websites and we both agreed that our photographer was the one. He had a gallery on his website of the last 70 weddings he has done and I know from going through them that his work is really good and consistent. He has also snapped a lot of weddings at our venue and that was another thing that I wanted; someone who was familiar with where we are getting married. Here are some pictures he has taken at our venue:

Peter Blanchflower Photography

I'm so pleased with our choice and feel that we are in good hands. Our package was right on budget too and includes an engagement shoot and all day photography.

So that's one thing off the to do list and quite a few more to go! I'm looking into videography at the moment and hadn't quite realised that that was going to cost as much as the photography, are you having a photographer and videographer?

Gorgeous Bracelets

Hello! Hope you are having a great weekend, I've been watching hurricane Irene on the news and hope that none of you (or families) have been affected by her, what a nightmare :( I'm lucky in the UK that we don't have to contend with such forces of nature as hurricanes and earthquakes and feel for those who have to deal with them every year.

I just wanted to share another gorgeous Etsy find, again thanks to Emmaline Bride (love that site!). I think these bracelets would be a fabulous bridesmaid gift for them to wear on the day, they are all one off pieces and can be customised to your wedding colours.

Lonkoosh via Etsy

They also do beautiful combs as well:

Lonkoosh via Etsy

These are all designed by Alona Freeman and you can check out her Etsy shop here.

Sold!

Take care everyone xx

Cute Etsy Find!

Absolutely loving this cute heart ornament found thanks to Emmaline Bride and had to share!

Lilac Saloon via Etsy

Lilac Saloon have a variety of these and they can be customised with a hand embroidered name, perfect as favours or perhaps labels for a candy table? I think these would also be quite easy to make yourself if you are handy with a needle!

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.

Advert on the Tube

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!

I Won I Won!!

It's been a very busy week here hence the lack of blogging, I've been working late a lot and we had my fiancé's Grandma to stay over the weekend which was ace. I've lost both my Grandmas and feel very blessed to have a new one in my life. Grandmas rock! We took another trip up to our venue to show her and she loved it, phew!

I'm off to London tomorrow to Buckingham Palace to see the Duchess of Cambridge's wedding dress and am so excited. They also have her cake, shoes, veil, tiara and earrings on display. I'm taking the camera so will report back if photos are allowed!

Now I don't know if you are like me but I've been entering every competition going to win things for the wedding (and there are loads of competitions out there, hurrah!) and I had a very exciting phone call today to say that I had won one! So what have I won...? A boudoir shoot, eek!!! I found this competition (which you can still enter) via The Bride Fairy on Twitter and I was slightly nervous about entering as I'm very shy and not too confident but knowing how much my fiancé would love the end result I thought why not. I did look at the company first and they seem to be fine and do it all quite tastefully and with female photographers thankfully! That doesn't stop me from being extremely nervous though!

Would you consider doing a boudoir shoot for your man? Have you done one and have any tips to pass on?

You Are Invited...

I wanted to share with you one of the few things we have sorted for the wedding and that is our invitations!

These were probably the only thing so far that I haven't spent ages thinking about and researching which, to be honest, was a bit of light relief! Although I am absolutely loving all of the planning and researching I am unbelievably indecisive and I know that over the next 14 months I am going to be over-thinking every last detail and changing my mind over and over again! I'm not sure my fiancé knows what he's let himself in for! So it's nice to have at least one detail nailed and in choosing the invites I have also chosen my main colour and a design that I might carry over into other things.

When I started looking into prices of invitations I was a bit shocked, it seemed like I was looking at paying at the very least £2 ($3.25) an invite for a small, basic card and the sky seems to be the limit! I thought for a while about making my own as I'm quite crafty but I wanted something that looked professional and was put off a bit by what a mammoth task that would be given we are having around 120 guests.

I also had the fight in my head of "your invites are the first thing people see regarding your wedding and so it's worth spending the money to make sure they are beautiful and elegant" versus "there is no point spending hundreds of pounds on stationery when it's all going to end up being thrown away after it's served its purpose". My friend told me she knew someone who spent £3000 ($5000) on wedding stationery. Seriously. Whilst I want mine to be nice and in our colours I really don't want to pay a lot for it.

So, as an in-between, I have ended up with some DIY invitation packs from the Brides collection at Michaels. I absolutely love Michaels and I wish they would come to the UK. My Mom and I recently visited some friends in Minneapolis (and the Mall of America!) and we took a trip to see what Michaels had to offer in the wedding stakes. I got three packs of 40 invites for $120 (plus tax) and three packs of 40 matching thank you notes for $30 (plus tax). Bargain!! As we are having a civil ceremony we are not bothering with orders of service but they did have matching packs of these. Here they are:

They were a bit of a spur-of-the-moment buy and my fiancé didn't get to see them before I bought them (!) but he said he trusted me to get whatever I saw and in the end loved them, phew!! The invites come with reply cards and envelopes but I am thinking of putting all the information about our wedding on a website and asking people to RSVP through that so I might use the reply cards/envelopes as save the dates.

I'm really pleased with them and can't wait to print them all nearer the time. I'm going to see if we can incorporate the design on our cake and I'm thinking of using any left over invites as a backing for our table numbers.

I also got some really cute little bows with pearls in the middle in a matching colour for a few dollars, I'm going to stick these to our place cards:

Are you going to DIY your invites or are you leaving them to the professionals?

Pastel Cupcakes

Just wanted to share my latest creations, these were vanilla cupcakes with vanilla icing for a wedding anniversary celebration. Yum!

Have a great weekend :)


Like this post? You might also like:
Cupcake Centrepieces
My First Cupcake Bouquet!

A Fab Budget Spreadsheet

The time has come, I can no longer put it off, I need to start thinking about the wedding budget and how much everything is going to cost before I start running away with the planning!

I'm so so lucky that my Dad has very kindly agreed to pay for our reception and as we have got an amazing package from our dream venue that includes quite a lot. We get ceremony, breakfast and evening reception room hire, three course meal with drinks package and tea/coffee, evening buffet, disco and the bridal suite and two premium rooms for our parents all included which is brilliant.

But, as you know, there is still a lot of other costs; flowers, apparel, photography, honeymoon, favours and the list goes on... In fact if I actually sat down to write out all the things we had to include in our budget I'm not sure I could remember it all in one go! So I decided to ask my friend Google for some help and found this brilliant (FREE!) wedding budget spreadsheet. It seems to cover every cost you can think of and even gives suggestions as to what percentage of your budget you should allocate to each category. Here is a screen shot:

via vertex24

You can customise it too, I've added columns for deposits, date deposit paid and date paid in full. You can also add to the categories and change the labels. I'm definitely going to find this useful! You can download the budget worksheet here.

And if you want some help with saving for your big day check out this really neat saving tool brought to my attention on Love in The Big Easy - thanks!

Happy budgeting!!

Cupcake Centrepeices

I recently discovered and fell in love with cupcake bouquets and made my first one last week for my friend's Birthday. I got to thinking about whether or not I could perhaps develop this into a centrepiece for the wedding... that might seem a little crazy but when I turned to my friend Google it seems perhaps not! I found this amazing bakery called Designer Delights who have a whole gallery of their wedding creations including centrepieces! Here are just a few wonderful examples:

via Designer Delights

This one is my absolute favourite:

via Designer Delights

I just think that these are so different and quite personal to me as everyone knows I love cupcakes and it would be such a great way of incorporating them into our day as we both want a traditional wedding cake rather than cupcakes.

I think that they would work out cheaper than flower centrepieces too and could be made up without the cupcakes weeks before the big day if using artificial greenery. I also know a great place to get the cupcakes from (Blue Door Bakery) as I've been to some cupcake classes there so wouldn't have the stress of making them the day before. 

I'm going to do a trial one soon to cost it but I have no idea how much flower centrepieces are to compare so I think I need to do my homework. The good news is my fiancé loves the idea! What do you think, is it a bit too crazy?!

Welcome Gifts

Happy Monday! Hope you had a great weekend, mine was filled with lots of fun times with family and friends. I took my sister-in-law to see our wedding venue on Saturday and she absolutely loved it. I was so impressed by all the staff who were so helpful and cheery, definitely a good sign! They even let us look around some bedrooms that we hadn't seen previously which was nice, it is such a gorgeous place.

We are going to be having a lot of out of town visitors for the wedding and I think it would be quite nice to put together a welcome pack in their rooms as a little thank you for making the trip. I've recently discovered Emmaline Bride which is an absolutely amazing resource for handmade weddings. They have a marketplace too where you can buy all kinds of handmade goodies. I found the following on there from a company called Navy & Lavender.

Navy & Lavender via Emmaline Bride

This cute collection is called their 'Wedding Wishes Gable Box' for $24 which is personalised and includes water, mints, kettle corn popcorn, heart sugar cookies and a 'rescue pack' with advil and pepto. They even have city themed gifts as well as seasonal ones:

New York, New York: Navy & Lavender via Emmaline Bride

Fall in Love: Navy & Lavender via Emmaline Bride

The totes range from $32-$47 and can be personalised in your wedding colours. I absolutely love these and if I had the budget I would be ordering them by the box full! However, I'm sure it would be easy to make up some inexpensive welcome gifts. I'm thinking of getting some nice paper bags perhaps decorating them myself and personalising them and then adding some essentials like water, tissues, paracetamol and mints. Love the idea also of adding some sweet treats especially if I can get things that are made in Warwickshire, I'm thinking fudge, cookies that kind of thing. I'm getting so excited about all the things I can hand make for the wedding although I think I'm going to have to space out projects over the year! 

Are you planning on making welcome packs or favours for your big day?

Polaroids v Photo Booths

I really love the idea of having a photo guestbook where our guests can have their photo taken and this can then be stuck to a page in a guestbook which they then sign. So I started off thinking that I would get a polaroid camera and film and perhaps ask someone in the bridal party if they would take on the job of snapping everyone. However I debated this quite a bit as this will probably be quite time consuming and I don't want any of my party missing out too much on the fun. My worry about setting up a table for this is that some of the guests may not realise it is there or not get involved. Then I started looking into the cost of cameras and film and was really put off!! I have since found a firm that rent out instant cameras which is probably the most viable option; hire of two Fuji instax cameras for £35 and film £15 for 10 shots (this seems unreal to me but appears to be cheap compared to polaroid options!). Excellent.

via Engadget

via Picture Blast

However for over double the price (£500 - eek!) I could go the whole hog and hire a photo booth. I know this is quite a popular wedding trend but I do really love the idea of a photo booth and I think our guests would have so much fun with it. This company seem to do a really good deal - unlimited photos, props box, video message option, e-mail functionality and a person to man it. For an extra £50 they will supply you with a leather bound guestbook and actually stick the photos in for you and get your guests to sign it which is a brilliant idea.

I'm now quite sold on the photo booth but I'm thinking I need a bit of a reality check here; £500?! That could go towards (or might even get me) a band or all sorts of things. I guess I (or in reality my DIY Dad) could have a go at constructing a photo booth but I've got no idea how cost effective that would be. Hmmm... What do you think? Are you doing anything similar for your wedding?

My First Cupcake Bouquet!

I have recently discovered the amazing things that are cupcake bouquets! I'm sure everyone in America will be well aware of these, it seems that we are quite behind in the UK on cake trend! Being an avid lover and maker of cupcakes I had to have ago and what better excuse than a friends Birthday? Here is the result:

I was really pleased with how it turned out and my friend absolutely loved it! I was amazed at how easy it was to make, the base was just a plastic flower pot with a few pebbles in to balance the weight of the cupcakes and I got seven plastic drinking cups and stapled them together (one in the middle and six around it) and placed them in the pot so that they fit snugly. I then wrapped the pot in tissue and florist's cellophane and secured it with the ribbon. I baked the cakes and cut the tissue paper into squares and put them between the cake and the cup to hide the cups. I then iced the cakes when they were all in the cups with buttercream and, using a Wilton 1M nozzle (star shaped), started in the middle and then swirled the buttercream outwards in circles so that the cakes look like roses. Not bad huh?

Feather Bouquets

I loooooove Etsy. It is amazing, all those fantastic crafty people out there making beautiful pieces and so many great ideas for weddings. We have something a little bit similar in the UK (Not On The High Street) but there is so much more choice on Etsy and it seems like loads of people ship to the UK too, hurrah!

As much as I love flowers I've seen a few pictures in magazines of heirloom brooch bouquets which really appeal to me as I'm a lover of all things sparkly and they are great to keep and put on display after the big day.There are so many beautiful creations on Etsy, I just wanted to share a few...

BluePetyl via Etsy

Noaki via Etsy

I think they would also make lovely centrepieces in a nice vase although they are quite pricey with all those embellishments. When I started looking at these heirloom bouquets I stumbled across feather ones which I liked even better perhaps because they were a bit simpler and not so blingy!

Croska via Etsy

La Plume Ethere via Etsy

I love the one above, so simple but gorgeous. I even found ones in purple for the bridesmaids and boutonnieres...

Handmade Wedding Shop via Etsy

After getting quite carried away with feathers and wondering if I could create a bouquet myself I showed the pictures to my fiancé who really didn't like them! Ah well I guess I'm back to flowers but I'm determined to incorporate feathers somewhere! I found this gorgeous bouquet wrap which is perfect if you just want to add a little bit of sparkle and feather.

Mia Von Minks Wedding via Etsy

What do you think about flower alternatives?