The Wedding Cake Confessions ♥

If you read my previous post, you may know I have been worrying about the wedding cake! In that post, I put that we were thinking of buying three plain tiers from Marks and Spencers, and decorating it ourselves. Ed and I went into M&S over the weekend, and took a little look at the cakes. They had them in stock priced at £56.00 for the Large base tier, £40.00 for the middle and £10.00 for the top, which was tiny. We looked at the birthday cakes, and a similar cake the size of the medium tier, decorated as a birthday cake with intricate flowers etc, was £15.00! It is an absolute rip off, plus I really don't want to be an average joe with three white tiers. What suits some, doesn't suit others and I'm all about bringing the quirk to the table.

So, we put our heads together while we were in the shop and came up with an idea that suits us down to the ground.

You know these little guys? They are the yummiest of the yummy in my opinion! Our table names will all be after Parisian monuments as that is where we got engaged. So what better than French Fancies? They also go along with the vintage theme as they are vintage picnic-esque if that makes sense. 

We are both fans of French fancies, so we thought how could we turn it into a wedding cake. Then I remembered they do these...

Giant French Fancies! A Perfect tier topper, and the cake that we can cut. These retail at £8.00 - an ever so slight difference to the £300.00 for a shop made cake, and from the £106.00 for the plain one from Marks & Spencers.

The plan is to purchase an acrylic square cake stand, ideally with 5 tiers. The giant cake on the top, and all the normal French Fancies on the four other tiers. This is the cake stand, and is £24.99 on Ebay with free P&P, I shall link it under the image. The trouble is, the top tier is 6 inches wide, and I have no idea of the size of the giant French Fancy, so I am going to pop to Sainsbury's with my ruler, and make myself look like a mad woman. The average cost of a pack of 6 Fancies is about £1.00, with a hundred guests that's about £16.00, so maybe a few more for good measure. Say £30.00 for the entire cake, job DONE!

To pretty it up a little I may stick some of the sugar flowers mentioned in the previous post on the giant cake, and a few of the little ones, just to make it look more wedding like, but that's only an extra couple of pounds. 

And there is the quirky, budget-savvy wedding cake, sorted.

Tilly xXx

My Little Ebay Finds ♥

Being a DIY bride, I must spend hours upon hours sifting through Ebay. Pages and pages of items from sugar flowers to dresses. This blog should probably be called confessions of the Ebay bride, but hey ho! I thought I would just share with you a few items I have found that I am considering for the wedding, how much they are, and what I plan to do with them. I'll also pop the links below each image, so if you are planning your own celebration, you could get them yourself =) These are in no particular order, just whatever I pick out.

These organza bags are a total bargain, it's 50 for £1.79 or 100 for £3.19. I am torn between the nude colour and the pink. As well as favours which may possibly be teeny pots of home-made jam, I am going to have these organza bags dotted randomly on tables filled with mini eggs! It is Easter Good Friday on our wedding day, so I thought we have to involve it somewhere. This just means there's a subtle hint of Easter, mini eggs are nice pastel colours, so I could put five bags on each table, and then fill a bowl of mini eggs on the buffet table. The total cost would probably be less than a tenner for a pretty little Easter hint.

Update - I bought 50 nude bags for £1.79, wehey!

Organza Bags

This is some floral vintage style fabric I have found. It comes in a fat quarter bundle for £7.50 with £1.75 postage. These would be ideal for the top covers for the jam favours, and also to make some bunting. The fabric on the far right has the exact colours of my little sister's bridesmaid dress too! So I shall get two lots of these because I think they will look so pretty all around the tables on the jam lids, tied with some brown twine! I have already got the twine too, 4 rolls from the 99p store!

Vintage Fabric Bundle

These are the teeny Jam jars I keep waffling on about. They are so cute! You know the type when you go down for breakfast at a hotel, and they have these with Jam and marmalade? I think with them being small they add a bit of quirkyness to the favours, and with a nice sticker saying 'Spread the Love' on the front, perhaps with the date of our wedding, they will be super duper. The only slight issue is...I've never made Jam before! Where there's a Till, there's a way!

These are 100 Jam jars for £53.00, which I don't think is too bad really. I excited to see them filled with Jam, with their little floral hats on!

Mini Jam Jars

Cake. Cake, cake cake. I have a mini panic attack when I think about the cake. Scouting around online, cakes are round about £300.00 for a 3 tier cake. It's daylight robbery, I know a lot of intricate work goes into them, but it only gets eaten! I have been thinking about buying a cake base, just sponge already iced in 3 or 4 tiers, and decorate it myself. Risky I know, considering you can only really get it 14 days before, and I could mess it up, but we will see! I think it's worth a go, plus it will be personalised, even if it's crap.

These pretty sugar flowers are £3.99 for 100, and I could either dot them all over randomly, or do a pretty trail up the tiers. Ill have to design before I stick!

Sugar Flowers

That's enough jibberish for now, but at least you can see what I have been looking at. What do you think? Have you got any Ebay items to recommend? 

Tilly xXx

I am back ♥

Oh Hey! Long time no blog! What a few weeks it has been. Ed and I went to Cyprus for our holiday last week, I am missing it already! It was so lovely and hot, and all the guests we talked to seemed to be going to a wedding over there, or booking a wedding. We were thinking after all this talk, are we doing the right thing staying in the UK to tie the knot? After a 5 hour non - stop pool chat along with a few other hotel guests, and much thinking, I honestly think we are doing right by what we are doing. I know that all our guests can come, well more so than if it was in Cyprus, I can tailor the room to exactly how I want it, and if it rains then we will just have to have some romantic rainy pictures. 

Here we are over there. It's all about the giraffe sunnies!

If you have read the previous posts, you may know that I ordered my little sisters bridesmaid dress. Well it came, and my Mom took that big tacky bow off straight away and it made the world of difference. Where the bright pink ribbon is, I think we are going to cover it with a slightly duskier/lighter pink just to tone it down a little. I'm also going to try and get an underskirt to flare it out a little. It's a really cute dress though, different with a vintage feel which is what I really like on it. 

Here she is with it on, it's just the right size to grow into over the next 19 months for her, and she is holding one of the little posies I have been making. It's not quite finished, but we just took the photo so we could get the full effect.

I spotted another wedding dress on the land of Ebay yesterday, which is a gorgeous lace and taffeta dress. I really love it, it's so elegant but still holds that vintage touch with the shoulders. I have broad shoulders so I thought this would work well to tone them down but others have the opinion that it may accentuate them, any ideas?

I do still love the dress I have put on here as 'the one', I just love how classy this is. 

The lace up back detail is stunning, and this looks so nice with a long veil. I also have a tattoo on my right shoulder, so this would also tone that down a little if I was going to cover it. That's another post in itself that I'll talk about at a later date. 

I hope everyone is well, next post coming very soon! Ooo and P.S. I gained 4lb on holiday, I went to weight watchers yesterday. I think it may have been more than that though because we moved house on Saturday and I must of dropped a couple then! I am really disheartened actually, because the people that joined around the same time as me who I was running alongside with weight loss, are now a few lbs ahead of me. I really need to try and get it off!

Tilly xXx