Cheese cakes

A lot of couples are changing things up when it comes to wedding cakes. It is not unusual to have a cake made entirely out of cheese.  What a great way to put more of ‘you’ and your own personality into your wedding. If you’re not really into cake or for some reason you can’t eat it, it’s an especially good idea. Cheese cakes are making an appearance at more and more weddings.

Which isn’t a bad thing if you are a lover of cheese like me. What a great idea to do if you are having your reception at a winery. The chosen cheeses could be paired with the wines that the winery offered. Lots of the cheese cakes that I have seen have all sorts of fruits that compliment the cheeses. They look lovely with all the figs, grapes and apples as well as flowers to decorate them.

It could also be a great way to provide guests with nibbles while they are waiting between the ceremony and the reception. Not only does it look great it, it gives people a choice and can be easier than having someone handing out nibbles and canapés. A good solution if you are doing a bit of a do it yourself wedding. Or even an idea for a small celebration wedding. There are pages and pages of inspiration on the internet and pintrest has thousands. I found a great article with tips for creating your own cheese cake here.

My best friend had a cheese wedding cake at her wedding. We celebrated the ceremony on a paddle steamer that took us to a winery for our lunch and on the way to the winery there was a fantastic cheese cake for people to enjoy. If you haven’t read it before you can read about Emily and Jules’ day by clicking here.

Have you been to a wedding where the couple chose to have a cheese cake? Would you happily forgo the standard cake for one?

All images found on Pintrest.

Signing Legal Paperwork on your wedding day

There are quite a few legal documents that you have to sign when getting married.  On your wedding day you will be signing 3 documents during your wedding ceremony.  These 3 certificates need to be signed by the Bride and Groom. They each need to have a signature of one witness to the ceremony that is over the age of 18 and the celebrant (or minister/pastor/priest if in a church) needs to sign also.

The first is one of the official certificates, that gets sent to Births, Deaths and Marriages in the state where your wedding is held, for registration purposes.  This certificate has documentation called ‘Declaration of no Impediment to marriage’, (blog about that coming soon) on the back that is previously signed by the couple before the wedding ceremony that confirms that there is no reason that they cannot be married.
The second is another official certificate that is kept by the authorised celebrant or church, it will usually be in a big book that all of their previous weddings are recorded in.

The third is the ceremonial certificate that is kept by the couple. This is the pretty certificate. But unfortunately this cannot be used by the Bride to change her name, although I am told taking a copy with you on your honeymoon might help you get an upgrade to a fancier room. To change your name, you will have to get a copy of  your marriage certificate from Births, Deaths and Marriages. This process takes some time as the person who conducts your wedding has 14 days to register the marriage with Births, Deaths and Marriages. Then, Births, Deaths and Marriages can take a bit of time processing it. I generally recommend that couples wait around 6 weeks before applying for their official certificate from Births, Deaths and Marriages.

One thing to remember for all brides on their wedding day is, no matter if you are changing your name after you are married or not. You need to sign all of your paperwork in your maiden name, or name that you currently use. You must sign in the same name.

 

A big thank you to Love Journal photography for the use of their images on the blog this week. Check out their website and facebook, they have exciting things going on at their brand new studio. Check it out.

 

Website for your big day

A wonderful idea that I saw done brilliantly recently is having a website for your big day. I have seen some couples do this and it provides great information on all kinds of things that your guests may need and want to know.  Recently I conducted the wedding of Nell and Glenn, and they had the best website. I only got to see it close to the day, but was absolutely blown away by what they, (or mainly Glenn, who is a website developer) had done.

It had everything that any guest could ever need to know, it had so much information and photos and quotes. I have seen other websites that compared to this, just seemed just thrown together. Rather than putting 12 different pages of information in with the invites, why not just direct your guests to a site that has everything they could need there?

Information about the venue.
What a great way to have some background on the venue itself, maps and anything else guests could want to know.

Information for the day.
This would be a great way to tell guests that confetti is not permitted at the venue or that you want an unplugged wedding. Its also a great time to share if you are using a wedding app, have some #hashtags, or if you want your wedding kept off social media.

Accommodation in the area.
This is such a great idea. Having all the information on accommodation that is close to the wedding is so that all guests, no matter if they were travelling from overseas or from an hour down the road, have links to the appropriate ones.

Getting to the venue.
Nell and Glenn had buses pick up some of their guests. Their site even had the timetable of when the buses would pick people up at specific locations. Maps, Melways references and all other helpful information.

Who to contact on the day should they need any assistance.
The last thing a bride or groom really want on the wedding day is people phoning them or texting them with all kinds of questions. Even if you don’t have a wedding planner, pick someone who can be that go to person.

RSVP options.
Have an option for them to RSVP online, people have good intentions but they don’t always get to the post office in time.

Added information about other events.
Are you having a brunch the next day or having people meet up for a coffee? This is a great way to supply all the guests with the information and with plenty of time for them to plan their weekend accordingly. Maybe you could put any hens day or bucks day information on their too. Really you could have anything on there!

Glenn said the things that worked well for them with their wedding website were:

• the simple single page design made it all easy to see and find information
• we added ‘getting there’ info to the top of the website a few weeks before the wedding
• we ran an RSVP through the site and after experimenting with a fancy google forms solution I found the best way to record RSVPs was simply through providing an email address.
• we got to re-use the wedding invite artwork in the site and included some of our engagement shoot photos

There are so many things that you could add to this, and so many ways to make this your own and match it all to the theme of your wedding. It is private too. If you are just giving the information to your guests, it isn’t like you are making a facebook event. It would be really hard to stumble onto the website by accident.

Check out the site that Nell and Glenn had here. And feel free to get in touch with Glenn by contacting him at glennnicoll@gmail.com if you have any questions or you are interested in having your own website made for your day.