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?