Trending Black Wedding Cakes

We thought we would start this week off with our love of black wedding cakes which is taking the wedding cake world by storm at the moment along with beautiful cakes with calligraphy writing on.

The love of using blackboards for wedding signs continues to be used in most of our weddings we create and we have become rather famous for our beautifully handwritten masterpieces thanks to Isabel at Sparkle and Dash who creates all our wonderful handwritten signs, beautifully designed table seating plans and wedding stationery. 

Isabel has now launched her own company, Sparkle and Dash, so do hop over to see more of Izzi's work on her Facebook page.

It seems this trend is not going away and is being incorporated even more into weddings, being translated to cake designs and we love it!

We thought we would share some fabulous black wedding cake inspirations with you taken from Pinterest and also sent to us by Sweet Things by Fi as we work on our wedding designs.  

It takes a brave bride to choose this style cake but what a statement it would make and such fun to style up for your wedding day.

Wedding Celebrations at the Castillo de Santa Catalina, Malaga

Here we are at the beginning of 2015 and already busy planning our weddings for this coming year but are still receiving wonderful photos of our 2014 weddings to share with you.

Lea and Marouen's wedding at the end of September, is one of my favourites from 2014 and they were such a charming, sweet and delightful couple to work with. 

I remember meeting with Lea in Malaga at the beginning of last year and Jess driving Lea around Andalucia as they looked at venues, finally settling on the beautiful Castillo de Santa Catalina for their wedding and the Cortijo Sabila for the pre-wedding paella pool party and base for their wedding preparations.

As their wedding day approached though we were really excited but also frantically checking the weather on every possible available weather app known to mankind as a storm of gigantic proportions had been predicted hitting Malaga around 6pm just as their ceremony was about to start.  I think I was introduced to weather apps I did not know existed this day!

We, as wedding planners, and knowing the huge amount of rain that can literally pour from Spanish skies had sadly resorted to going with plan B to play safe but instead after much consulting, toing and froing and a rather large and elaborate floral arch being moved from inside the venue to outside via a lift and a flight of stairs, plus a little bit of stress, and last minute parasols being hired in, we decided to risk it and continue with plan A.

In the end not one drop of rain reached us as the storm raged out over the sea and a beautiful and fabulous wedding was underway.  We were so lucky but I have never seen so many eyes looking up to the skies and surveying the looming clouds!
  
The girls got ready at the Cortijo Sabila where they were well and truly looked after by the one of the greatest hosts I know, Yvonne.  Jess was totally in love with Lea's dress and having palpitations over her beautiful Jimmy Choo shoes!   Then the girls left and travelled down to Malaga to the stunning Castillo where Lea and Marouen's beautiful ceremony was conducted on the roof terrace of the Castillo de Santa Catalina by the lovely Natasha.   

We created a floral arch which we think looked lovely despite being moved and broken down to fit into the lift and quickly reassembled!   The aisle on the roof terrace was lined with blossom trees and blush petals and a welcome table was set up displaying the Order of Service booklets we designed, antique pink parasols, personalised fans and confetti.

The cocktail area set in the Castillo's ruins really did not need much decoration as it is so beautiful but we set up a fun area for bling rings and hats and created a lovely table seating plan with different frames set onto a wooden board.

As the evening progressed we have never seen so much dancing under the fairy lights, it was fabulous, the celebrations were well and truly underway.  There was a wonderful flamenco display followed by a delicious meal and a lot of dancing away into the early hours with Tristan the DJ.

The wedding theme was blush and golds, we decorated the venue with lots of lanterns and a large fairy light display hanging down the walls of the venue.  The tables were beautifully sparkly with our gold sequin table runners, blush, pink and peach floral arrangements set into vintage style gold pots surrounded with gold tealights, the whole effect was beautiful and stylish.

Lea and Marouen provided each guest with some very pretty favors of chocolates decorated with blush flowers and a little bag of sugar almonds which were set off perfectly on each place setting which we had styled with our gold charger plates and tied each napkin with a blush ribbon.

Jess and Rocio organised the whole day beautifully and the wedding cake was created by the venue and finished with some lovely gold glitter heart cake topper decorations ordered by Lea as she knew she could not have a wedding without my love of gold glitter!

We hope you enjoy these photos of such a beautiful wedding at the Castillo de Santa Catalina, we have lots of weddings there again this coming year so we are sure this will help many of our couples envisage their own weddings here.

Our thanks to Jess and Rocio for being such fabulous planners, the venue, Joseba Sandoval from Romance Weddings for such wonderful images, Yvonne at the Cortijo Sabila, Natasha the celebrant, Tristan the DJ and of course our congratulations to Lea and Marouen x

Confetti for Weddings

For personal reasons I have had a blog hiatus but now we are slowly coming back from a difficult time and welcoming 2015 with more fabulous ideas, inspirations and real weddings from Spain.  

We are going to share many of our insider tips for a more Martha style blog this year and show you how we create our details for our gorgeous weddings.  

So we start this year with confetti as I am always amazed how many of our clients overlook this element for their wedding day.  

It is often a last minute addition to their wedding day decor lists but, for me personally, it is one of the prettiest and celebratory items you can include for a bit of sparkle and fun.

There are so many wonderful ideas out there so we thought we would share some with you that we also create here in our studio.  You can step away from the rather overdone confetti cones and introduce something much more creative and fun!

We are in love with these confetti wands including of course a touch of glitter.  

Glitter could of course be a bit messy for a wedding day, I spend my life covered in glitter!, so why not add in some sequins or as we did earlier this year for one of our weddings in Toledo some glitter baby pom poms.

Confetti bags are always a lovely alternative to cones and easy to pretty up with personalised wedding stamps or printed labels.  Fill with biodegradable coloured paper, we often use heart or butterfly punches to create our clients confetti but do make sure the paper does not run and create nasty stains before adding it to you confetti mix.

Lightweight paper, such as tissue paper, works well as it stays in the air longer. 

Confetti bars are set for 2015, a fun idea as your guests gather for your ceremony.   

These are along the same lines as a candy bar but using containers filled with different items to make up confetti, you could use rice, sequins, pom poms, coloured paper, glitter if you wish to get messy, lavender, rose petals, the list is endless!  Confetti bars can be styled and colour themed to match your wedding so you could create the vintage look or have a fabulous retro riot of colour.

A good idea for guests to use to create their confetti mix are sturdy cupcake wrappers, we created some this year using gold card cupcake wrappers and it worked a treat!

This idea maybe difficult to create though if you are having a church wedding but confetti does not always have to be thrown at the ceremony, you can plan it back at your venue for when the bride and groom enter or later as you leave.

Do always check with your venue though before planning the throwing of the confetti, many venues and churches sadly have banned it, due to the mess, but if you can throw some sparkly things around go for it or just save it for another occasion!

All images were found on Pinterest.