Pretty Noms!

Just a couple of adorable cakes that (as far as I know) were not originally wedding cakes.

I think my favorite is the faux sunprint cake.  Food coloring and an airbrush gun!  I love the minimalism and elegance of the design.

Edit on 8/12/11: Adding this!

Adorbs!  I DIE.

Wedding Colors

I've gone back and forth on the color thing, and I'm still undecided, but it'll be good to get some thoughts down on it now and see if it helps.

I'm a big fan of varying shades of blue, but one that I really love is teal.  Teal looks great with a lot of different accents, but I love it best with orange or a dusty pink color.

However, the problem with a color like teal is that there seems to be different definitions of teal.  Add the fact that teal options are difficult to find, and you end up either having to pay more to get the color or DIY more decorations.  So now I need to look at other color options that are more readily available.  Turquoise or Aqua might be acceptable options to teal since they're pretty similar but more available.

Here are some other palette contenders that are variations of teal and rose/orange.

Turquoise, navy, and grey (wintry palette)

Yellow, orange, and aqua (summer or autumn palette)

Royal blue and gold (spring or summer palette)

Maroon, aqua, and "bubble gum" (spring or summer palette)

(Okay, so I'm not thrilled with the name "bubble gum," but it's a fun color combination.)

Papaya, navy, gunmetal (autumn palette)

(Seriously, who comes up with these names? No wonder colors are so freaking hard to find!)

I could live with any of these color combinations for a long time.  Maybe the best thing to do is to see which season would work best, which means seeing when ideal venues are available.

Dessert Table

I read somewhere that a standard wedding cake can go anywhere from $2-$8 a person and that couples typically allocate about $500 for the cake alone.  I'm not much into wedding cakes myself (at least based on the ones I've tried).

Without a doubt, I know I'd want to have a small, single-tier cake (maybe double-tier at the largest) for my wedding as part of a great dessert table with all the great desserts the groom and I have enjoyed over the years.  Benefits of a dessert table:

• It accommodates to many different tastes for the guests.  Some people will want the traditional cake dessert, but maybe some will be too full from dinner and will opt for fruit or candy.  Or cookies.  Or jello.  Or pies (hell, I could probably do a pie table alone and still be able to satisfy guests' tastes).
• It can be really affordable, depending on the desserts you decide to go with.  I imagine more candies and cookies will keep the price lower.  A 8" guava cake from Aki's Bakery would probably feed about 12 people (depending how you slice it), and that's $30 ($2.50pp).  Gourmet macaroons costs about $2 a cookie (ouch!), but the costs might be lower if you order in bulk; Trader Joe's supposedly has some frozen macaroons that are actually pretty decent and are $5 for a dozen.  Pies go for about $8-$12 a pie, with each pie feeding maybe 8-12 people ($1-$1.50pp!).  DIY-desserts are the cheapest (boxed brownies on sale for $1 can yield 2 dozen brownies (less than 5 cents a serving!). 
• The dessert table doubles as decor!  If taken the time to set it up nicely, a dessert table could look really stunning.

Okay, so this last one is just mostly about the cake.  I'm not too keen on the actual design of this, but I do love the strawberries!  Feeding each other strawberries instead of cake would be more fun. :)

A list of desserts that could be included (pending budgetary allowances of course):

• Candies: chocolates, gummies, and sour candies
• Fruits (in-season is best)
• Chocolate-dipped
• Tart form
• Parfait form (parfait bar?  Awesome!)
• Pies (chocolate pie, strawberry pie, apple pies with an a la mode option, custard pie)
• Cupcakes (banana cupcakes, s'mores cupcakes??)
• S'mores
• Small ice cream sundae bar (good for a summertime wedding); alternatively, maybe a halo-halo bar!
• Hot chocolate (good for a wintertime wedding)
• Guava cake, banana cake (cupcake forms are also acceptable)
• Doughnuts (could rent a mini-doughnut maker machine and give them out in pairs like "wedding ring" favors)
• Pudding?  Banana pudding, rice pudding
• Brownies
• Cookies (those Japanese cookies that the mister loves so much, classic chocolate chip, baklava)
• Cheesecake

And there's probably a ton more I haven't thought of yet.  I'm sure there could be a game made out of this like an Iron-Chef style contest among tables to see who could make the tastiest dessert. :P

More cake toppers! And other fabulous accessories!

Oh my GOD, I am loving the cake toppers on Etsy.

This one above is from Garden4Arts.  They make these cake toppers in several animal varieties with different accessories, similarly styled to the one above.  Priced at about $60 each + S/H.

Here's a similar set from kikuike.  These are just as adorable, maybe a little more elegant, and the sticker price on this one is $100 + S/H, which looks like the least expensive set Kikuike has on her Etsy site.

From StyleMePretty, these photo accessories caught my eye from a Nashville backyard wedding.  It's a more DIY-version of the popular photo booths you see now in weddings; I like that quite a lot.  I tried to find similar accessories on Etsy, but so far all I can find are these, which are fun but not as cool-looking as their polished counterparts above.

Last but not least, I love this idea of puzzle-style escort cards from 100 Layer Cake. 

See the original post for a better view.  Basically, guests pick up their escort cards and find the corresponding phrase at their seat.

All super-fun ideas! :)

Adorable Cake (AND CUPCAKE) Toppers!

Lollipop Workshop has the most adorable cake toppers!



Along with these expensive-but-worth-every-penny cake topper, I also love these more-affordable cupcake decals from HelloFrosting:



Saw both of these from InspiredBride.net. :)

Flower Girl & Ring Boy Alternative

This bride had a storybook-themed wedding and had "Max" from Where the Wild Things Are as the ring boy and "Ferdinand the Bull" as the flower girl (because Ferdinand the Bull loves to smell flowers).

Cute!

Place Cards

Chalkboard tags? Love it! Spotted on LazyBride who saw it from an Etsy vendor. So cute for seating cards!

Another very cute place card idea from Etsy:

Reception Table Detail #1

A "He Said She Said" quiz?  Fun and cute!

Off-beat Invitations

I'd love fun invitations to reflect the mood of my wedding.  Here's one that, while it's not quite polished enough for me, is really fun:

I really love how this couple used old-school style Viewfinder invites! They splurged on the invites and mailed boxes of Viewfinders to their guest list. :) I love the interactive nature of the invite above, but it's way too pricey. Another interactive invite that's better for budgeting purposes is the scratcher idea:

And there's the ever-so-cute pop-up cards:

Flower alternatives

I once saw a unique bouquet that was comprised of Christmas ornaments.  Neat!  I've never been a "flowers" kind of girl (I never know what I'd do with them after receiving them), so I'm on the lookout for alternatives to the traditional floral bouquet and wedding floral decor.

And aside from flowers generally not being my style, I might save some money from floral arrangements doing it this way. :)

While I can't find a photo of the aforementioned bouquet now, here are some that follow along the same lines:

Oh wait, here was the bouquet!

12/12/09: Edited to add this gorgeous beaded bouquet!

12/13/09: Edited to add another gorgeous beaded bouquet!

Exit details

From Jessica Schroeder's What I Wore Down the Aisle who got it from Oh! Darling:

Sparklers! What a neat idea!

Also love the idea of bubbles in lieu of rice throwing!