Our Cake

As I've mentioned in an earlier entry, we aren't having the 'traditional' wedding cake so to speak.

With our wedding being quite non-traditional all the way round, ie:

• Surprise wedding
• We're driving to the ceremony together
• Not having a sit down meal, canape & soup station instead so people will mingle

it's probably not a huge shock to read our cake isn't the 'norm'.

We are going with a cake table, where we will have 5-6 of our favourite cakes (cheesecake, pavlova, lemon meringue, chocolate ripple, mango cake), made by our mums, sisters, on cake stands, then in the middle we will have a taller stand with a 2 tier 'wedding cake.

The style of cake we wanted isn't the norm so to speak either, we didn't want a really formal wedding cake, with royal icing etc, we wanted something more informal.

So this is the style we've decided on:

Soft buttercream cake (photo source)

I am heading to the Sydney Flower Market with our florist (daughter of a friend) on the Wednesday before our wedding, and will pick out fresh flowers then to use on top and on the middle layer.  It won't be as many as this photo, but this is the inspiration.

Below is how we hope the table will look on the day, or there abouts!

The cake table look we're going with (photo source)

As with just about anything that includes the word wedding, the quotes I obtained from cake shops to make our cake were scary, ranging from $350 - $440, plus delivery, plus flowers!

As I've probably mentioned a few times, we're paying for our wedding 100% ourselves, so budget is definitely high on our agenda. $500 (cake plus flowers) for a cake just seemed ludicrous.

However this is where I've been lucky, or resourceful perhaps, I met with the lady who is helping us decorate the hall (a retired lady who does it as a hobby), she lives in the town next to us, and mentioned that one of her friends does cakes on the side, and gave me her contact details.

We were a tad sceptical, thinking that maybe it would be a fruitcake making lady who would baulk at the thought of a buttercream cake filled with 'weird' flavours.  So when I went to meet her last night I wasn't overly confident.

Well my lack of confidence was definitely misplaced, the lady bought out an album of cakes she has created, and there were some lovely ones, she's very talented.

She was a bit shocked with our surprise wedding concept (quote "I'd kill my daughter if she did that", oops!), but once I'd explained the relaxed style of wedding, she came round a bit, and was excited about our cake choice.

I was a bit nervous asking about using flavoured ganaches, but she said if I could get her the recipe she'd be fine.  Yay!

So our choices:

Bottom Tier (Mr Mel) - Chocolate cake with jaffa ganache
Top Tier (Me) - Vanilla (or maybe coconut or lemon) cake with rosewater ganache

The recipe I found for the rosewater ganache looks simple enough, I'm sure our cake lady will be fine:


White Chocolate and Rosewater Ganache (recipe source)

• 
  
  • • 150g White Chocolate
      

      • 100ml Thick Cream

      
      

• • 2-3 drops Rosewater essence
    1. Heat cream in small saucepan over medium heat. When close to boiling, remove from heat and let rest for 30 seconds or so before pouring over white chocolate.
    2. Mix well, making sure the chocolate is melted. Add the rosewater and stir well.
    3. Place mixture in a piping bag, seal and leave in fridge for 10 minutes to thicken.
    
    
    The recipe for the Jaffa ganache looks simple also:
• Jaffa Ganache (recipe source)
  
  200g Dark Chocolate Chips
• 200ml Thick Cream
  1 tsp grated orange rind1 tsp orange juice (we might swap in a splash of cointreau)
  1. Pour about 1 1/2 cups of water into a small saucepan and place a heatproof bowl on top.
  2. Place the chocolate in the bowl and continue to mix until almost completley melted then add the cream and stir until combined.
  3. Take bowl off the heat and stir in the orange juice and rind and set aside to cool stirring every few minutes until ganache is thick and spreadable.
• 
  

And the best thing of all, the cost, would you believe $120 including delivery, plus whatever flowers I buy she'll put on for me, for free!!!!!!!!!!    

SCORE!!!!   

I sooooo love all the savings we've made through research and word of mouth, sure it would be so much easier to just order everything off the shelf so to speak, and be done with it.  But so far I think we've saved about 1/3rd costs across the board, from hiring the venue, through to dress, catering, cake, flowers etc, all through being willing to put in some hard work and not take the easy route.

Yay! Although I may be speaking to soon, as this Sunday is 'DIY Bunting Day' cue the Jaws, scary, full of dread music!

Wedding Guestbook

So many things pop up when you're organising a wedding, things I hadn't even considered have somehow made it to my 'To Do List'.

One of those things is a Guestbook.  I hadn't even thought about it until my hairdresser asked what sort I was having, I must have given her a deer in headlights look, as she ran out the back and bought one out she'd just bought for her wedding in a few weeks.

While hers was lovely, ivory material cover, with a ribbon and blingy catchment thingo on it, it's not really us.

So I went Googling, good god why oh why did I put 'wedding guestbook' into Google!  The options are endless!

A tiny portion of the images when you Google 'wedding guestbook'!

I knew what we didn't want, white/flowery/lacy/blingy, nothing against it really, but it just wouldn't go with our informal style surprise wedding.

So I trawled Google into the wee hours for quite a few nights, yes Boss if you're reading this, that's why I had big bags under my eyes, well part of the reason!

We had thought maybe a photo board which people could sign, but then thought what would we do with it after the wedding, put it on a wall?  Nope most likely not, it would probably end up in the back of a cupboard, or under a bed or similar.

And then I stumbled upon Guestbookstore.com, definitely not the most cost effective option, but I thought we have cut costs/corners in so many places, why not spend a bit more than we were expecting on something that will be a keepsake for our special day.

We wanted something where our guests could leave comments/notes for us, not just a 'sign here' type thing.

On Guestbookstore, you select what style of book you want, in our case the 'One-Of-A-Kind Wedding Guestbook' then you select your cover style, we went with Asian Bloom:

Asian Bloom Guestbook cover

Then you select your page styles, Casual or Formal, we went with Formal.

We chose to have a title page, with our names & the date of our wedding.

Next choice is 'Wedding Memories Page Design' or 'Wedding Predictions Page Design', we went with Memories:

Guestbook pages

And we added a page to include our invitations:

A page to stick a copy of our invitations

So that's it, our guestbook, we're going to have a bucket of coloured markers for people to use, and I'm pretty sure this book won't be hidden away, after our wedding, the cover itself is a piece of art worthy of display, and the memories it will contain will be priceless!

DIY Decorations

With our big day just 10 weeks away today (eek), my to-do list is getting done, altho I still have a few DIY projects to get done.

I blogged earlier about the DIY Bunting I'll attempt, I invested in a new sewing machine (on sale at Spotlight, usually $249, got it for $149!), and next weekend I have blocked out Sunday to get bunting!

I have 5 metres of calico to practice with, and if it goes ok I will dye some of them different shades of green, and pick up some patterned material to use also.

My next DIY project will be Martha Stewart's Tissue Paper Pom Poms, the tutorial on Martha's website looks very easy (have I just mozzed myself??)

Martha Stewart Tissue Paper Pom Poms (photo source)

So I have just ordered about 300 sheets of tissue paper on Ebay, in 4 shades of green, and 2 shades of white.  Hopefully they will arrive this week, and I can knock them off next weekend also.

After next Sunday (23rd May) I will hopefully have photos of metres & metres of bunting, and a pile of pom-poms, wish me luck!!!!!!  :-)

Finetuning the Songs

When we met with our celebrant Victoria last Friday, she asked us what songs we were having for each part of the ceremony, while we had started to put together a list of songs, we hadn't really put alot of thought to what we'd play when.

So with that prompt from Victoria, we put our thinking caps on, so far we have it narrowed down to:

Arriving at the Hall - Going to The Chapel - DixieCups
Walking Down The Aisle - Jessica's Theme - Man From Snowy River 
Signing Registry - Somewhere Over The Rainbow - Israel Kamakawiwo'ole's version
Walk Back Down Aisle - Crazy Little Thing Called Love - Queen
First Dance - Halo - Beyonce
Cutting cake - tba, maybe How Sweet It Is - James Taylor
Bouquet Toss - Single Ladies - Beyonce
Garter toss (if we do it) - tba

Israel Kamakawiwo'ole - amazing voice (photo source)

Will update as we finetune!

How We'll Do It!

Since we first started thinking about having a surprise wedding, we had been tossing around different ways to do "it", to let everyone in on the surprise.

We had been thinking that we would tell both sets of parents on the morning of the wedding, then Mr Mel would go to the hall with everyone, saying that my sister (brides slave) & I were running late at the hairdresser, then about 1/2 hour later, then while we're on the way Mr Mel would announce what was happening. My Dad would then meet me at the car for walking down the aisle.

However that would mean I would miss out on most of the surprise, so we weren't 100% convinced.

On Friday night we met with our Celebrant (Victoria from A Beautiful Day), who we are very happy to say, is just lovely, phew, as neither of us had met her (I had been emailing her), and on the drive there we thought what happens if there's a personality clash, we'd left it a bit late to find a replacement, but very happy with Victoria, she's going to make our day even more special.

Victoria asked us how we were going to do the surprise, and we kind of looked at each other, saying Ummmmmm for a bit, then she said she'd been thinking about it, and after meeting us, and discussing what sort of a wedding we wanted, relaxed, informal, that she had an idea.

Everyone will go to the Hall for the 2.30pm start, Victoria will be there (with table/microphone hidden), she won't stick out as most of our family & friends haven't met so they'll just think she's a friend/family from the other side!

My sister will apologise to everyone, saying that Mel as usual is late, stuck at hairdresser, Mr Mel just rang to update or similar. Drinks and nibbles will be available, music on, to help with distraction.

Then at around 3pm, Mr Mel and I will drive to the Hall, together, in our wedding gear, and us getting out of the car will be the announcement! (bit of goosebumps happening thinking about it!)

This way both of us will get to experience the surprise of the day.

When we arrive, Mr Mel will head to the ceremony spot, and my sister will go get my Dad, and bring him over to walk me down the aisle (along with tissues, as Dad will cry!).  Mr Mel will ask his best mate to stand with us as witness and Best Man (we can't ask beforehand as his wife, Mr Mel's sister will give the game away!).

Then we'll have the ceremony from say 3-4pm, then myself, Mr Mel, Sister & Best Man will go for photos, around the Hall, and closeby, for about an hour, then we'll come back and it's party time! Mr Mel & Best Man won't be wearing same suit, but really does it matter?  They'll both look smart, but won't match, no big deal.

Yay, am so happy with the arrangement, and Mr Mel loves it too.

Celebrant Meeting Tonight!

We're meeting with our Celebrant tonight for the first time!

Victoria Langham from Beautiful Days is our celebrant, I've only spoken to her via phone & email so far, but she seems lovely, laid back and has done surprise weddings before, so seems a perfect fit!

Our celebrant - Victoria Langham

She sent us a folder full, I mean full to the brim, of versions of vows, readings, ceremony 'stuff' to read through, and on the weekend Mr Mel & I finally sat down (separately) and went through it all, noting down which ones we liked.

Mr Mel was very decisive, just selecting 1 of 6-10 options for each section, while I 'narrowed' mine down to 2-4 per section, happily Mr Mel's 1 was in my 2-4, so we're on the same page at least!

So tonight we'll meet with Victoria and find out how the day will run, as we're both a tad clueless!  It will be good to pin down the timing etc, so we can let the caterer/decorator know how the day will run, also will help me to get it all straight in my mind!

Shall report back after tonight's meeting!

Bomboniere time

Over the last couple of months Mr Mel & I have had a few discussions on the bomboniere/favour front. Our discussions have included - Do we do it? Will people expect it? If we do, how much to spend?

After a bit of back and forth, we agreed that if we could do it for good value (not using the cheap word heehee), we'd probably (Mr Mel was still wavering) do it.

After scouring many websites, we've decided to go with:

• Cadbury Chocolate Hearts - dimensions of 3.5cm x 3.5cm x 1cm - milk chocolate, individually foil wrapped in Green, Lime Green, Ice Green, Silver, White

Cadbury Chocolate Hearts - from Ebay

• We're going to do them up in bags of 6 - 8 hearts, in Willow Green Organza Bags, with a hand written 'Thank You' tied round each one

Willow Green Organza Bags from Pink Frosting

The cost for the choccies & bag works out at about $2.25 per person, which is pretty good compared to what I found online and in shops!

IF I get time I'm considering making some homemade treats for guests to take home, either a bottle of liqueur or a jam or something, not sure yet. But will put more thought to it, once we get through the next week or so!