WEDDING IDEAS

~ 19th April 2012 ~

One of the earlier things we started to organise (funnily enough) was the favours for our wedding. For some reason I was really set on tea cups from the get go. We visited this massive building in Shanghai filled with all sorts of Chinese wedding things. There were stalls selling candles, chopsticks, invites, chocolate and we found these adorable little things…

Their cuteness got the better of me, because I didn’t consider:

a) how difficult it would be to ferry the porcelain tea cups from Shanghai to Australia

c) how difficult it would be to set up the boxes to (mind you, the “喜” cut out had already been done for us)

b) how the red boxes can’t be stacked when their butterfly lids are properly assembled

It took many trips from Shanghai, layers of wrapping and a lot of careful placement to ensure the teacups reached Australia, and the wedding venue without breaking (quite stressful when you have a million other things to worry about).

However, recently someone asked me why I chose teacups. I was going to say that they were too cute to resist, but before I could answer, she asked if it was whether the teacups represent a lifetime together (一辈子). I think I’ll take that, because I’m an absolute sucker for symbolism.

For our second wedding, we decided to go with something smaller and more practical…

Small Arabic pieces of chocolate filled with pistachio nuts and pink rose petals. My wedding planner organised for the rose emblem from our wedding invitation to be printed onto little stickers and placed on each wrapped piece of chocolate…

The best part to this was any leftover favours were eaten up in no time! This was definitely the easier and more practical option of the two

~ 19th February 2012 ~

Ok, let’s start with something sweet shall we? What about the wedding cake?

To be honest, wedding cakes are usually quite forgettable in my opinion…especially when you have awesome dessert at your wedding. However, if left for guests to take home, it can often make a nice little treat late at night once they’ve made their way home (that is of course, is if your guests know to take packaged cakes home).

Having said that,

Bride + Groom + cake cutting = picture moment

that every wedding album should really have. Our videographer and photographers didn’t stay the entire night, so they asked us to fake the cake cutting in order to capture it on camera. We silently made our way to the cake table and stood there smiling and “cutting” for the cameras. Suddenly all our friends gathered around and started snapping. We told everyone we were faking it for the cameras but no one seemed to listen and continued snapping. And when the time came to really cut the cake, everyone was so consumed with our dessert stations, only a few noticed us to come take official snaps hehe (fail – oh well, at least they enjoyed dessert!)

Anyhow, during my hunt for the wedding cake, I realised how expensive they could get. And because I wanted a big one, even foam tired cakes would cost almost the same as if they were real mud cake inside them because of all the detailing they need to do etc. Then when you add the sugar flowers and what not, it can easily reach over $1,000.00!

So a friend suggested to me to just order a plain white cake and get the florist to add some fresh flowers onto it. So there I was with 2 of my bridesmaids (pretending we were sisters) asking for the shopkeeper to show me a catalogue of their birthday cakes that we wanted to order for our (pretend) youngest sister for her (pretend) 21st birthday. Silly me, I forgot to take off my engagement ring, and he said…”Here you go, have a look at some BIRTHDAY CAKES”…he made these ” ” quotation marks with his fingers over his ears as he said “Birthday Cake”…. that was one face-to-hand-plant moment!

Funnily enough, after more hunting, I returned to this “birthday cake” shop and met with the shop owner. She was one lovely lady and offered free delivery and made sugar flowers to match my bridal bouquet. We were really happy with the final product and have the top tier frozen for our first anniversary

My tip would be that you don’t necessarily need to find a super duper cake shop specialising in wedding cakes because from a small little store, you can still find great personalised service and a beautiful cake too.

Our Wedding Cake

~ 16th February 2012 ~

So Valentine’s Day has just passed. We enjoyed our first V’day as husband and wife over a  lovely degustation dinner at Cutler & Co. (courtesy of two lovely Trans ) and then a movie. I thought this was going to be a nice time to start writing about wedding ideas (before I forget about all the little details!). I stumbled over this very funny video, and thought what a nice way to start off this new page.

Enjoy!