Kitchen Tea

My girlfriends threw me a kitchen tea!

It was so wonderful.

Think.. china teacups (enough for 22 people!), cupcakes, brownie, mini sandwiches, jam slice, tiers, pretty dresses, lovely ladies, kind words, cute wife-y games, poems, shared recipes.. and presents! Lot's of them! People were so generous I couldn't believe! I imagined Kitchen Tea parties were for bringing along one vege peeler, a set of measuring cups, or a can of cocoa... but boy oh boy were we blessed! I wish I had photos of everything. Now we have enough things to fill a kitchen! Frying pans, cupcake sets, recipe books, a handsewn peg apron, a pizza-making set, every baking utensil you could want, mini tongs, a cake slice, M&M brownie-in-a-jar (that was exciting) serving dishes, a knife block, measuring spoons and cups, muffin pan and a flan dish. And more!

I wore a cute floral dress, borrowed from Rachel. This is my attempt to photograph myself in my little bedroom.. with my camera propped up on my drawers. Yes, I used self-timer to photograph myself..
Hm.

my first stalk

So I may have become a little obsessed with Stephanie Fay. She's a San Diego based wedding photographer who was behind the camera for the photos a few posts down..

See it's strange.. I am not one to enjoy reading about people I will never meet, or following famous people. Or really following anyone except my nearest and dearest, for that matter.

But the mix of Stephanie's incredible photography skills, the fact that she has the job I could only dream of, her views on life and God, that she too is currently planning her wedding, the striking photos she manages to have taken of her, and that her and her fiance are beautiful.. all thrown together brings me to find her blog captivating! It is the sort of situation that if I didn't generally despise the idea of 'Twittering' (following someones every move and thought) so much, I would consider following her. Now that is extreme..

On a similar note, I cannot help but feel slightly envious when I read wedding blogs set in America. I know I am generalizing.. but from everything I have seen, they just do things so freaking well! Massive wedding showers.. always a rehearsal dinner with a theme, catering and a wonderful, specially purchased dress.. impeccable weddings with detail galore, and photographers/videographers who capture the day with perfection. Is it that they have a massive budget? Or do American's just have a culture of doing things well? Or is it simply that only the big and bold weddings feature on webpages so it's easy to think they're all insanely awesome? Perhaps we can blame the fact that they have access to wayyy more services than we do here in little NZ..

As much as I would adore a wedding with even half as much detail as some, or style even half as awesome as people like Stephanie, or photography skills that could actually be considered skills... I really can't complain with what I have, and who I am. This wedding planning has caused me to become to selfish, so 'wanting', so inward focused. In the end, I don't want my wedding to be any bigger or bolder than it is going to be. It is one day. It is a special day. But at the end of it, I want to come away with a couple of nice memories, and a tall, blue-eyed, handsome man for a husband.

"Set your mind on things above, not on earthly things..." Col. 3v2

A-door-able?

Ok so who wants to build a doorway for our wedding...

I am drooling...

Nothing like an indoors wedding outside. I am actually in adoration of this..

This same wedding had tons of ridiculously cool things.

Birdcages for table centerpieces..

So the men's shoes don't necessarily have to be identical...


Drinking out of jars? Juices of all flavours?
I dream of such details.

More on the Stephanie Fay Photography blog

It's all on the head.

So, I needed some headpiece inspiration.. And look what I stumbled across! Thanks to Style Me Pretty. These are all from American designer Myra at Twigs & Honey.

THE cake.

I am not much of a plastic-figurine-cake-topper kind of person. In fact, I'm not much of a 3 tiered cake kind of person either.

So it figures that having a tall stack of our all-time favourite chocolate brownie (yes, from the recipe on the back of the flour bag...) is both taste-ly satisfying as well as meaningful. It will be inspired by the traditional french wedding cake - The Croquembouch


Okay okay.
I admit that that is not a genuine Croquembouch. But the chocolate eclairs look so much more appealing when coated in chocolate rather than sticky spun toffee.


Replace the eclairs with dark fudgey brownie packed with white chocolate (and perhaps raspberries?), replace the spun toffee with white and dark chocolate dribble (much like the first Croquembouch), serve with large bowls of cold, thick, Greek yoghurt.. voila! The perfect 'Jesse and Christina' wedding cake.

Now, to disguise it in wedding attire; Cake Toppers.

I have seem some disturbing cake toppers in my time. But not these.

Oh no.

These are adorable! Despite the fact that they would take forever to make. I can't put aside the idea of a bird bride and groom since Rach suggested it!

Cara of Peonies and Polaroids shows how to make them here. Her and her The Boy constructed them together... along with ten billion other DIY wedding projects.

The Relationship Timeline

Nothing like sharing your story with all the guests. I like this.


Image from 100 Layer Cake

Brownie Pops

Nyum nyum. I like brownie, and these are cute.

Five Little Cakes

Found on Martha Stewart Weddings, this feature on wedding cake alternatives sparks my interest.

Five Little Cakes

It may seem like a break from tradition to serve more than one cake at a wedding, but it's actually quite an old custom. At medieval Anglo-Saxon weddings, many small cakes would be served in a mountainous pile, and eventually pocketed for the journey home. Sometimes the bride and groom attempted to kiss over this pile of "cakes." In those days, of course, cakes were nothing more than dry, hard, unleavened biscuits.

With the advent of baking powder, cakes became lighter -- and grew much larger. It was really a desire for convenience that led to the innovation of stacking several cakes and fusing them together with some kind of sugar to feed a large crowd. This also made it easier to transport a cake to a feast. The tiered shape so familiar today may have just been a concession to balance and physics. Although times have changed, most of these traditions still exist in one form or another. The similarities are easy to see: We still pack up slices of "groom's cake" for guests to take home with them.

Croquembouche, the traditional wedding cake of France, is a mass of tiny cakes, profiteroles to be exact, stuck together with caramelized sugar. The bride and groom still lovingly feed each other cake, often followed by a sweet kiss. With five different cakes, the bride and groom can choose their favorite flavors for their exchange.

Along with croquembouche and a scaled-down, three-tier version of the traditional American wedding cake, we've included three other delicious ones, so the guests can have a choice, too. Each displays a banner bearing a reminder of another enduring tradition without which no union would be complete: vows. The rituals surrounding the cake, whatever it may be, are an important and symbolic part of the wedding day. Its exact shape and nature are less important than remembering that the main purpose of the cake is to allow everybody to join the bride and groom in sharing their joy.