It's all about family and food: Kyle and Melissa Get Married!!!....and The Cake!!!!

Yesterday my little brother Kyle and his (now former) fiancée Melissa got married. We couldn't have asked for better weather especially as today looks like it's going to be raining. Our house was pretty busy as Melissa and her bridesmaid sister Tina got ready at our place. As well as that we had the little girls, the photographer Charlie, Melissa's mum and her friend Bruce here too, not to mention all the hustle and bustle of hair and makeup appointments and last minute organisational bits and pieces. BUT while it was pretty full on, it was fun and really exciting. My brother has overcome a lot to get to where he is today and I am so proud of him. Melissa is a good woman and I really think he has chosen his life partner well. Along with that she brought along one of our nieces, the very lovely Rebecca as well as also giving us our other niece Maddisen a couple of years ago. We welcome her to our family.

The wedding itself was lovely. A woman I work with is also a marriage celebrant so she did the service. The service was held in Western Springs (The Quarry), and the weather was amazing but very hot. Afterwards we all had a drink of bubbly to toast Kyle and Melissa, milled around for a bit chatting and doing photos before leaving for the reception venue in Pt Chevalier while they continued on with photos. The venue was actually really good. It was in a private part of a bar up there called Harlequins. The room itself was pretty big, had a back deck with lights, it's own bar, and was very art deco. After the food we had speeches (of course I had quite a bit to say), cake cutting, first dance etc before everyone boogied on down. Harry danced all night long once he got a bit of courage dancing with me. Reubs just hung out with all the older kids. So all up it was a wonderful day and now my little brother is married! Dons and my turn next year!

So to the foodie part. My gift to them was the wedding cake. Anyone who has ever made one would know that they are time consuming and pretty pricey to make. I was really happy with the result even though all I could see were the mistakes and parts where it wasn't perfect. As well as that I had to borrow a camera as ours was stolen (amongst other things), when our front door got kicked in of the morning of New Year's Eve so the photos, while not too bad, aren't as good as they would have been if I had my own camera. The bottom layer was a 30 cm dense chocolate cake with a vanilla buttercream made with seeds from a vanilla pod. I used my most favourite recipe for the cake as I know it holds up well over time. As it was made over 3 days, I really needed good recipes to make sure we weren't eating a hard, stale cake on the day. The top layer was a banana and coconut cake from my new Ripe cookbook. I actually made 2 cakes but the banana cake from the Heavenly Cakes cookbook, just didn't have the same height as the Ripe recipe. For this one I iced it with a lemon buttercream.

The fondant was Ivory coloured Bakels fondant (I used almost 3 packs of it once I covered the cakes and the cake board), which I sprayed with PME Pearl lustre spray (cost $30 for a small can). This really topped of the cake and made all the difference as it shimmered without being too over the top. I also piped on some dots with watered down fondant and topped the whole thing off with some beautiful flowers that my lovely friend Leon did, and cascaded over some rose petals. Unfortunately one of the little kids there stuck his finger in the cake so we had to hide the spot with a strategically placed rose petal.

Anyway here are loads of photos of the day.....