Let them eat cake....

I'm returning to the wedding theme JUST ONE MORE TIME! On Saturday night, my son and his new wife held an 'event' for all the friends and family who weren't with them in Vegas (namely US!!!!) It was held at Spinnaker Tower, Gunwharf in Portsmouth. As you can see below, the views are spectacular and luckily, the rain stopped, the sun shone and it was a fabulous view of the Solent, Isle of Wight and surrounding areas as the sun went down.

A few weeks ago, they asked me if I would organise a cake for the night - I readily agreed and then started thinking about how I was going to produce a cake suitable for a wedding in the AGA! As I have told you before, the AGA is brilliant for lots of things but I haven't had a lot of success with cakes. There are two ovens - one permanently at 220 - 250 degrees and the other 120 - 150 (not good when you need 180 for a good cake outcome!) This project has caused me one or two sleepless nights and quite a few fretful hours recently...after a few trial runs (and much consumption of chocolate mud cake by whoever would agree to be a tester) I finally found one I was happy with. I wasn't game enough to take a chance on the cupcakes though - the temperature in the AGA varies depending on how much it's being used; therefore, the first batch may cook perfectly and by the time you get to the 4th or 5th, they may not as the heat will have dropped....! Not ideal when you need nearly 100 cupcakes, all perfectly the same size and height!
I found a place in south London called Crumbs and Doilies and they came to my rescue with dozens of beautifully decorated indulgent cakes (two sizes - diet and don't care..) On Saturday morning, we set off early for London, complete with topcake, ribbons etc., collected the cupcakes and zipped down the A3 to Petersfield to the Real Flower Company to collect some of their magnificent scented garden roses to decorate the finished cake. We were lucky enough to find they had some 'chocolate' coloured roses in stock - hard to see from the photo, they are a burnished pinky chocolate colour. Off we went, now laden with buckets of roses, be-ribboned boxes of cakes, bags of ribbon and a fragile iced topcake. The tower doesn't close to the public until 6.00 p.m. and it was about 6.20 p.m before we managed to get everything into the fast lift which whisks you to the top - 30 minutes before the guests were arriving & a seven tier confection to assemble! It was finished with literally moments to spare and I slipped on my high heels as the first drinks were being poured! Talk about stress! This is the end result - I think they liked it - there wasn't a crumb left at the end of the night so I'm presuming they did! I'm crossing Wedding Cake Supplier off my list of potential business ventures as I type this......

Happy week.........s

Life is the Occasion...

L.K. Bennett in the U.K are currently running a new season campaign entitled 'Life is the Occasion'. It features some of their customers (wearing LK Bennett clothes of course) photographed in the environment in which they work..

Lydia Gifford is photographed at Giffords' Circus - you can read more about Giffords' Circus in a post Sarah at http://www.semiexpat.blogspot.com/ did a while back. I love these photos - you can almost forget they are trying to sell you something! You can see more about the idea behind the photos at http://www.lkbennett.com/life%20is%20the%20occasion.

Have a great week & don't forget - Life IS the occasion....enjoy it........s

Wedding Photography....but not as we know it..

OK - I confess that I wasn't too keen on the idea of a Vegas wedding but I have to admit right here that if they hadn't gone to Vegas, there's one thing they would have missed out on big time - the awesome talent of this lady:





Her name is Olga Wilson and she has a business in Vegas called Dott Photography - She puts a small selection of her work on the blog part of her website and it was there I have to say I saw the best wedding photography I think I have ever seen. Today, she posted some of the brilliant shots she took of Neil and Sam's wedding last week - I truly think they are the most innovative, clever and inspirational photos - she has captured the fun loving spirit of both the bride and the groom and given them a series of images of their special day so beautiful and original.....
Do you remember the days when wedding photography meant taking photos of the bride getting ready, the groom shaking hands with the best man, the happy couple standing in the doorway of the venue and some photos of all the relatives looking bored? (That was if you could round them all up at the same time and get them to stand still for long enough!) The result was usually an album filled with photos of wooden looking couples, nervous looking bridesmaids and startled guests which then gathered dust in a cupboard....not any more!
I sent the link to my GG in Sydney and got a reply to the effect that no matter where her wedding takes place, she is going to fly this talented girl to take her photos! (she must be good!)
Take a look & let me know what you think! http://www.dottphotography.com/

It WAS a nice day for a white wedding...!

Just married!

Now you see what I meant about the dress!

Scarlett O'Hara eat your heart out!

Nice day for a white wedding.....

When I used to daydream about my children's wedding days, this wasn't in the dream:

Or this:

I imagined English church bells ringing, bridesmaids with summer flowers in their hair and posies with ribbons dangling, big hats and small family squabbles - maybe that's also what my son and his fiancee imagined when they were making wedding plans and announced that it would take place here.....

Today, 11th August, on the terrace of the Bellagio Hotel in Vegas, my handsome boy will marry his fiancee and girlfriend of 11 years...

I met a lady last week who told me that she has four sons and has warned them all that if they decide to 'run away' and deprive her of the whole experience, she won't speak to them for a very long time! I did have that thought also when we first heard of the plan - today I'm not sure...I have mixed feelings - my easy going fun-loving son and his fiancee are having a ball, surrounded by a few of their closest friends (but stangely no family!!) They view the whole thing as an opportunity to have a great party, in a place devoted to fun and indulgence - as far as I can tell, devoid of any traditional trappings....

It's sort of bizarre really - for me, it's a normal day filled with normal household routines. As my son buttons up his waistcoat and the bride slips into her Louboutins, I shall probably be at Waitrose, shopping for groceries....

Underlying all of this is a desire for their happiness, fulfilment of their dream and a long and wonderful marriage - but still I think I hear those bells chiming faintly in the distance...........s

Travellers' Tales....

I think I have the task of packing a suitcase down to a fine art....this comes with years of practice - schlepping my wardrobe & personal possessions from one side of the world to the other at a moment's notice! I realised this week that I haven't passed the skill on to my children (or at least if I tried, they weren't paying attention!)

Firstly, my darling baby girl was packing her case to return to Sydney uni for the start of the new semester - we have tried (unsuccessfully) to convince her to travel light (I couldn't quite work out what she could possibly be bringing with her when she arrived here as her chest of drawers in her bedroom was completely stuffed full of her clothes, along with the one in the guest room). Nevertheless, after a 'massive clearout' when she was feeling up to it and the glandular had subsided a bit, when the inevitable day of packing bags for the return trip dawned, this was the scene:

A couple of years ago, we invested in some luggage scales and what a great investment they turned out to be - I'm sure they have saved hundreds in over-weight baggage charges......when they were pressed into action, I breathed a sigh of relief.....she proclaimed her bags to be well within the allowed weight and off we went to Heathrow (yet again.....)

On arrival at the check-in desk, we duly loaded the bags onto the luggage scale and noted the solemn look on the face of the girl checking her in...she pronounced that the bags were 'at least six kilos over' - I looked at my GG and she responded with a puzzled expression...pressed further, she explained that she had only weighed the large one! We never actually got to the bottom of why she thought the other one was either weightless or would be disregarded by the airline! Oh, the innocence of youthful naivete! This girl has obviously never had to stand in a very long queue and hand over a very large sum of money because she couldn't bear to be parted from a large section of her wardrobe....

After some sweet-talking from the LAB (whose sales and negotiating skills come in very handy on such occasions) and the removal of a large coat from the bag - which she carried over her arm but still went onto the aircraft (not in the bag admittedly....)??!! she was on her way....

Another journey to Heathrow early this morning (not by me this time!).....my son and his fiancee were flying to Las Vegas to be married on the 11th August....the main topic of conversation for the last few weeks has been........no, not the venue, flowers, food, guests or accommodation.......but the troublesome problem of how this diminutive girl was going to transport her HUGE dress from here to there....

(This is a model wearing a very similar dress from the collection by the same designer)

I visited them last week and also pondered the mission ahead....THE DRESS had to be moved so that I could sleep in their guest bedroom (it actually took up most of the space in the room!) I took with me suitcases of varying sizes and we all put our heads together to solve this mathematical problem - one VERY large dress + one VERY small girl + a possibly tight squeeze in the storage locker in the aircraft cabin = a BIG headache; or, alternatively:

one VERY large dress inside a VERY large suitcase checked into the hold + an inattentive baggage handler = an even BIGGER headache...

Eventually, it was decided that the best course was not to let THE DRESS out of sight, resulting in son, girlfriend and dress all boarding a flight to Vegas this morning - at last contact, all were happily ensconced at the pointy end of the plane (frequent flyers saved for a long while specially for the occasion) and the champagne was flowing......happy days........s