A few months ago, I put up a random list of words that either are or could be related to fall weddings. Now that winter is fast approaching, it’s time for our list of winter wedding stuff. What is the point of this list? Basically, just to help you brainstorm a little:)

snowflakes

pine trees

garlands

lights

candles

white, blue, sliver, red, green, burgundy, gold

Christmas

poinsettas

pine cones

silver bells

snowballs

fruit cake

egg nog

chocolate

snowmen

angels

stars

ribbon

presents

fur

fireplaces

carols

popcorn

cranberries

holly, ivy, mistletoe

Winter Weddings | No Comments »

Our Online Store is having a special Wonderful Winter Sale with 19 wedding gown styles being offered at $199 for the month of November only!! So, for the next few weeks, we will feature some of the most popular gowns from that collection as your Dress Of The Week:)

This week we are featuring design # cc08 - a stunning Satin A-line gown with a strapless bodice and an elegant beaded waistline for a simple yet dramatic style.

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It snowed here last night - nearly 20 cm of cold, white goodness. Sitting here looking at all the white stuff has got me thinking about winter - and winter weddings. Have you ever notice how popular candles are in winter weddings. yes, candles are popular all year round of course - but more so in winter. Why is that?

Well, it’s mostly because winter is COLD and candles represent FIRE which is WARM (well, hot, lol). You will find candles EVERYWHERE in winter weddings - candle wedding favors, candle centerpieces, candles in the decor, even outside along pathways!

Last winter, a family across the road from use did a lovely Lighted Ice Lights pathway for Christmas. It’s actually fairly easy. You need a icecream pail and a large butter container. You fill the icecream pail with water, put the butter container inside with soemthing heavy enough to keep it in the pail, but light enough that is still floats. Freeze. Let thaw just enough to remove the containers. Then, you place these ice lanterns outdoors along the pathway with small lights underneath. You could also add food coloring to the water for some soft colored path lights as well!

DIY Weddings, Decorations, Winter Weddings | No Comments »

You’ve probably heard my wedding story in short form “2 weeks, 200 guests, $4000″. I thought now might be a ncice time to share some more about my own wedding:) I was engaged on May 14th and married May 29, 1999.

Cermony: My parents owned a 5 acre lot completely surrounded by trees, so we had our ceremony there underneath a large tree. The natural surrounding was lovely in late spring, so nto much was needed for decor. We rented white chairs and a heavy aisle runner. We had a small table at the front with a white table cloth. My mom placed a white pot full of pink flowers in front and my bouquet or white roses and orchids went on the table for pictures as well. We also had two pots of flowers on either side of the aisle. We didn’t really have a “theme” in mind but looking back, if I had to pinpoint the theme of my wedding it would be Spring Flowers.

Clothes: At first, we were a little concerned. The guys had gone and rented tuxedos complete with tails! Now, we needed to find 4 matching dresses that were formal enough - within a week! Each girl came with $300, expecting to have to pay a lot to make that happen. We had decided that each girl would find her own dress in a pastel color, as that would work with the spring setting. The first store we stopped in was actually for one of the girls who needed jeans - it specialized in funky tees and jeans - and carried maybe 2 dresses per season. There, one of the girls spotted a pale blue summer gown, with a navy blue floral print on it. It was a summery dress, but floor length with spagetti straps so it looked fairly formal. As luck would have it - they had exactly 4 left, one in each size we needed - and they were $49 each!!! Each girl bought a pair of strappy sandals and white elbow length gloves to add an extra touch. The guys then surprised us by showing up for the ceremony with matching sunglasses - which helped to ton down their tuxedos and pulled the whole look together.

My Dress: I had originally planned to wear my mother-in-laws wedding gown. She had a beautiful gown, and when Dave and I first discussed getting married, she offered to let me have it. It was a vintage gown, which I was going to update by removing the sleeves and high color for a simpler strapless look. But, we decided at the last minute to have the wedding BEFORE the baby - and at 5 months pregnant, I couldn’t get it zippered:( In the ended, I borrowed a stunning, $3000 custom gown made for my cousin. It was not really my style, my wedding dress would have been much simpler - but my husband thought it was amazing.

The Ceremony: We were fortunate enough to find a hall that was available and my mom and her sisters did a beautiful job of decorating it in pinks and blues for me. My dad’s secretary (whom I worked with) knew someone who had 25 cherub centerpieces from her wedding and I was able to borrow them for free - we placed them with candles and potpourri as our centerpieces. After the wedding, she offered to let me buy two of them off of her for $10 so I kept them as a keepsake. Other decorations included: candles, balloons, streamers, ivy, icicle lights, a bride doll, a wall collage featuring pictures of us growing up, and white trees with lights behind the head table.

My uncles and aunts provided the meal as my wedding gift. They served meatballs, chicken, potatoes, veggies, jello, coleslaw, etc. We had most of the regular wedding rituals - untiy candle, cake cutting, first dance, bouquet toss, etc - but one thing we did cut out was the garter toss. I mean really - 5 months pregnant - by that time in the evening, my feet and legs were so swollen there was NO way a garter was going on or off, lol.

Our wedding cake was also a gift. My dad’s shop foreman and his wife - well mostly his wife - made up a goregous cake with a pink, white and blue basket weave design, 3 tiers, pillars, white silk flowers and swans. It also had an adorable little precious moments topper. The top two layers were fake, and we kept them for almost 6 years before they were damaged in a move. The bottom layer we ate the next day with our families as we opened gifts and cards at my parents home.

Regrets? Well, I would have liked to have had my own dress of course - but looking back I am happy with the way it turned out. Except maybe the veil - everytime I look at the pictures I think “What the *** was I thinking?” - I guess it just goes to show that styles change very quickly, lol.

 

Real Weddings | 4 Comments »

Well I wasn’t planning to spend much time on Halloween Weddings this year, I thought this Jack-O-Lantern was worth a mention. If you are having a October wedding, here is a last minute project you may want to try to add a special touch of Halloween magic - in an elegant and unique way.

Some tips:

- pick a pumpkin that has a nice shape so it will display well

- draw your design on paper first, then transfer to the pumpkin. You can do that by taping the paper to the pumpkin, and then tracing it carefully with a shape knife. Once you have transfered the design, you can follow the lines you made to carve out the picture.

- need a design? If you aren’t an artist - look for a suitable clipart image printed off your computer instead.

Where can you use it? Anywere - the entrance to the hall/church, guestbook table, cake table, head table, or just about anywhere in the decor. If you are feeling really ambitious, you could carve one as the centerpiece for each table. Add some pumpkin pie for dessert and a pumpkin seed favor and you have a perfect Thanksgiving theme as well!

Decorations, Wedding Themes | No Comments »

You learn something new every day, lol. If you are familiar with fabrics and textiles, you probably already knew this - but most brides don’t and are often confused by this. How can you have a Silk Satin and why are there so many types? What is Duchess Satin and why are some called Silk Duchess Satin and not others? I get asked that a lot, so I thought I would share some info:

What is SATIN? - satin is not a type fabric: it is a type of weave. In fact, the type of fabric we generally refer to as Satin is a polyester fabric in a satin weave! If a dress/fabric is listed simply as Satin - it is probably the polyester satin.
So what is SILK SATIN? - I bet after reading the above, you can answer this already - but just in case: Silk Satin is a fabric made from pure silk fibers in a satin weave! (Just to confuse you more, silk in itself is not a fabric - it is a type of fiber that has to be weaved into a fabric of some sort - that’s why there are so many different types of silk)

Why are there so many Silk Satins? - There are PURE SILK Satins - which are pure silk in a satin weave. Then there are mixed Silk Satins which combine synthetic and pure silk fabrics in various degrees. These are more luxurious then polyester satins, but not as expensive as pure silk satins.

And What about DUCHESS SATIN? Well, duchess satin is a heavy satin weave with a more luxurious finish and is very common in wedding gowns today. It is also available using pure silk, a silk/synthetic blend or completely synthetic and of course, the price varies. For brides on a budget, the silk/synthetic blend is fairly affordable but still very luxurious. The pure silk version is very popular in Couture Designer Collections this year as well.

So, hope you learned something interesting, lol.

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So, Joanne is offically a Mrs. now - the wedding took place this weekend and was even better then we had hoped. The professional pics are not back yet of course, but here are some pictures I took myself.

This is the alter at the front of the church. During the ceremony, the photographer was the only one allowed to take pictures to avoid distractions - so I will have to wait to show more of the ceremony. It was a fairly flawless ceremony: except for a flower girl who’s dad helped her up the aisle. She was only three, and the crowd scared her, but it was so cute. The ceremony also included two vocal solos by a friend of the bride that were beautiful.

Following the ceremony, the wedding party climbed into a limo with the photographer for a series of surprise photo shoots. The first stop was McDonald’s were the couple posed with the child attendents and wedding party for some fun shoots before the little ones headed home for some down time before the reception. The rest of the wedding party the continued on to a number of surprise locations including: a Convertible Mustang in a Ford dealership, the fire hall, a local park with a gazebo, an elegant home in town with an amazing fireplace setting and more.

The reception had a fall / daisies / orange & yellow theme. Here, you can see the table settings, as well as a close up of the centerpieces with the cutlery set and favors. Below you will see the head table, with a centerpiece that was also used as the unity candle arrangement standing on the signing table during the ceremony.

The forecast for the weekend called for thunderstorms with a chance of snow, so to be safe, the decorator set up two photo sets in the reception hall. This one, on the left of the head table, featured hay bales, leaves, flowers, plants, pumpkins and more - even accented with a few fake mice and a spider! Family pictures were taken in front of this set-up. The arch from the ceremony was placed on the other side, with plants, candles and a wrought iron bench for a second photo spot, as well as a backdrop for the area were the presentations and speeches took place.

And last but not least - the cakes. If you follow my blog regularly, you’ve been waiting for this! This is my first attemted at a wedding cake in fondant! The larger cake is white, the smaller is chocolate (in retrospect, more people wanted chocolate so the larger should have been chocolate). The topper is a discontinued design from 1982 that we found on eBay for $60 (similar models in store were $125 - $150). As promised, I will be posting more on the cake-making process, including the things I learned in the process - in another post:)

Bride's Attire, DIY Weddings, Decorations, Flowers, Photography, Real Weddings, Wedding Cakes, Wedding Favors | 5 Comments »

So - my journey into cake making has officially begun. This weekend, I will be making my first wedding cake for an actual wedding! Actually, I am making two. One will be white, with 3 layers (14″, 10″ and 8″) and the other will be chocolate with 2 layers (10″ and 8″). I am covering them in fondant icing and decorating them with flowers to match her bouquet.

Last month, I attended a Fondant Cake Class with one of my sisters were we learned how to work with fondant. Today, I made my first batch of fondant icing. At the class, we used premade fondant but I decided to try making it as the premade is quite costly. Anyway, as it turns out, the homemade stuff is VERY easy to make AND tastes much better then the premade stuff!!(recipe below) I used almond extract instead of vanilla which gives it a great hint of almond taste. When we decorate the cakes on Saturday morning, we will be using buttercream icing underneath. This serves two purposes: it helps with taste, and it acts as a glue: holding the fondant to the cakes!

So: check back over the next few days as I will be sharing photos and tips I learn while baking the cakes, decorating, stacking, etc. To start off with: here is the fondant recipe I used.

INGREDIENTS:

2 lbs. of Icing Suger (1 KG)

1 envelope Knox Gelatin

1/4 cup cold water

1/2 cup glucose (from cake decorating supply stores or craft stores)

1 1/2 tablesppons glycerine (over the counter at the pharmacy, I got mine at walmart for $2)

1 teaspoon clear vanilla or almond extract

DIRECTIONS:

1. Place 3/4 of the sifted icing sugar in a large bowl, make a hole in the center.

2. Place 1/4 cup water in the top of a double boiler and sprinkle the gelatin over it. Let is absorb the liquid. Once it has absorbed all the liquid, put over boiling water in the bottom of the double boiler. Add glucose, glycerine and vanilla, stirring well until all is melted and well blended (MY NOTE: I don’t have a double boiler, so I used two pots, boiled a little water in the bottom one and then placed the smaller one, with the ingredients, into the larger one. My sister said she used a metal bowl placed over a pot of boiling water)

3. Add liquid to well or hole in center of the bowl of icing sugar. Work in mixture slowly with a spoon and then by hand until all sugar is absorbed. Scrape out dough onto a clean counter sprinkled with someof the remaining icing sugar. Knead in balance of the icing sugar if needed. Stop when fondant no longer feels sticky to the touch.

4. Divide into managable portions and place in plastic bags that can be sealed. Be sure to place the bags in an airtight container and store in a cool place. Fondant can be stored for a day or two once sealed in this manner.

COLORING:

You can color your fondant by adding food coloring to the liquid before mixing with sugar. But, if you want more control over the exact color, want a hard-to-get color (black, red, etc), or want to color only part of it: you will need to buy Paste Color from a cake decorating supply shop. You then color the fondant by dipping a toothpick in the color and poking it into the fondant: then knead the color in until blended evenly.

HOW MUCH DO YOU NEED:

This depends on the size and number of layers. One recipe will do both a 8″ and 10″, or one 14″ with a little left over for rope edges (made by rolling fondant into thin snakes and twisting together). For myself, I am making 3 batches in order to cover all 5 layers and make thin ropes for the edges.

DIY Weddings, Real Weddings, Wedding Cakes | 3 Comments »

Uzhhorod, Ukraine (AHN) - A chef fashioned his fiancee’s wedding gown from 1,500 cream puffs, making it in two months with the final product weighing in at 20 pounds.Valentyn Shtefano, 28, already had a growing reputation in his area for making baking a visual art.

“At first glance, it’s really a surprise. I didn’t even believe it was a cake,” said Olha Nemyataya, who tasted Shtefano’s new desserts. “Nowhere in Uzhhorod have I seen things like this.”

He got his education from a three-month baking course in Paris and had previously joined an international baking competition with his sister. They entered a 2-foot-long 1920s-era Cadillac made from cream puffs and caramel, and bagged third place.

Shtefano’s dessert creations can be racy like a pair of breasts at a pizzeria where his goods are sold. Although he was also known to create a detailed Easter cake that attracted hundreds to a cathedral.

“At first, it was even a little embarrassing,” the bride, Viktoriya Shtefano said of the dress she wore to the reception. “Cameras, interviews, but after a couple of hours, I didn’t even want to take it off.”

(Story provided by The Laptop Bride)

Bride's Attire, In The News | 1 Comment »

I got a great deal on a bulk lot of bridal veils recently. I don’t usually carry these, so I am selling them off at a great price. They retail from $60-$120 US, are all brand new, never opened and in perfect condition. I am selling them for $25 each plus $5 shipping. You can email me at dcakru@mts.net if you would like pictures of any of them

I have:

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