Manolo for the Brides

Romantic? Check. Elegant? Check. A little bit out of the ordinary? Check. A pink and gold wedding palette is perfect for the feminine bride who wants to plan a wedding that could be described as magical and lovely. Though this palette skyrocketed in popularity after the modern movie version of Marie Antoinette, a pink and gold wedding palette doesn’t have to be inspired by the French Court by default. As pretty as it is, the pink and gold wedding can also be modern.

So what do we have here? Traveling in a vaguely clockwise pattern, there are natural branches studded with tufts of fluffy garden stock blossoms from a party hosted by Tracy Metz, a striking pearl and bird necklace designed by kgarnerdesigns, a lovely soft pink wedding dress by Alisa Benay for 100 Brides for $100K, a pink wedding cake with delicate gold embellishments from The Wedding Cake Shoppe, a gorgeous handpainted wedding invitation from Momental Designs, freaking amazing shoes from Haberdashery Boutique, a delicate rose gold filigree bracelet, and a snapshot from a real wedding that included antique gold bridesmaid dresses from Vera Wang.

The pink and gold wedding palette is truly as sweet as can be!

Don’t like cake and, by extension, wedding cake? There’s always pie or pastries or chocolates or a sundae bar, candy buffet, and milk and cookies station. Cheese is considered a dessert by some, which means you wouldn’t be going out on a limb to offer a literal cheese cake. Or you could even skip dessert altogether with a sushi cake or a, um, pork pie cake.

That’s right, there be pork in them thar cakes.

“We are always looking to extend and improve our [product range] and hit upon the novel idea of a collection of giant-size celebration pork pies,” said Wilsons partner Andrew Green. “The pork pie wedding cakes, hand-crafted in our own in-house bakery, come in squares of ascending sizes of either seven, nine and eleven inches or five, seven and nine inches. They can even be personalised to include names, date and a suitable message.”

If you and your spouse-to-be absolutely cannot get enough piggy in your diet or your wedding, the Wilsons pork pie cake is one way to really load up on swine!

You’ll no doubt hear the words elegant and sophisticated much more than you hear the words adorable and cute when planning your wedding. Truth be told, this makes me a little sad. In the search for the magical and refined, it’s easy to forget about all things playful. Brides and grooms whose preferences lean toward whimsy and fun should let those preferences inspire them when it’s wedding planning time. They can’t all be chic evening weddings full of mystery and candlelight, right? If you love cute, plan a cute wedding with cute wedding cakes like these from Eat Cake Be Merry!

Polka dot weddings were all the rage a few years ago, and there’s no reason you can’t be the one to bring them back into vogue. A wedding cake like this looks great in pictures and can be made to complement any wedding colors you can imagine.

Here we have floral wedding cakes, done two ways. The first is cartoony cute and the second us ultra mod. If neither lights your fire, ask your wedding cake designer about a cake design that falls somewhere in between.

Cute and sophisticated? Yes, it can be done. Silver dragees paired with raised… well, barnacle looking thingies come together to form stylized flowers that have a playful edge. The silver on white color scheme, however, keeps this wedding cake from looking too quirky. Not that there’s anything wrong with quirky. You could always order this cake in purple and lime with black candies in place of the dragees and it would be just as yum delish.

Now that my lovely daughter Paloma is nine months old, I’ve been thinking a lot about DIY decoration ideas. What do these two seemingly disparate things have to do with one another? It’s simple. The Beard and I have been contemplating ideas for Paloma first birthday party, which means that I’ve been reviewing all kinds of neat DIY decorations that happen to be as appropriate for weddings as they are for birthdays.

One thing I’m loving right now is printable cupcake wrappers from Paper & Cake. That’s right, printable. As long as the bride or grooms owns or has access to a good printer, they can pay a little and get a lot since they can print out as many cupcake wrappers as they like, forever. Plus, the bride and groom can get away with serving cupcakes that are far less fancily iced because the cupcake wrapper is providing the color.

Printable cupcake wrappers could be great for the DIY bride who would rather handle her wedding sweets herself than pay a baker to create something for her. Though the instructions recommend wrapping undecorated cupcakes and then frosting them, I can’t see that surrounding an already-decorated cake with a cupcake wrapper could do all that much harm other than flatten the icing a bit on the sides. And at $4 per printable pattern (or $10 for a selection of three cupcake wrappers) it’s an easy way for brides and grooms to customize their cupcakes… er, provided that one of Paper & Cake’s cupcake wrapper designs works with their wedding theme or color scheme. For those who can’t find a match, I found a free DIY cupcake wrapper tutorial that lets you use any pattern you want. Enjoy!

Much like the gray and yellow wedding palette, the red and gray wedding palette is sophisticated and elegant. But the red (unlike the yellow) adds something of a maturity. I’d choose gray and yellow for an afternoon wedding, especially one taking place out of doors, while I’d choose red and gray for an evening wedding, one that might be a little more upscale.

I like this color combo more than I like red and black, because red and black can be a little jarring if too much is used alongside white. The gray tones the whole thing down a bit without sacrificing any of the visual interest or drama. Particularly if you’ve chosen a deeper shade of gray.

These beautiful red and gray wedding invitations from Peculiar Pair Press were inspired by the copper facade of the new DeYoung museum in San Francisco, which is where (I think) the reception might have been taking place. It’s a creative idea — if you’re having custom invitations designed, why not incorporate some element of your wedding venue into the final product?

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Oh, Mike’s Amazing Cakes, how I love thee. Unlike other bakers (and florists and caters, etc.) your use of amazing in your moniker is not so much boasting as it is a statement of fact. Want a wedding cake featuring the horrible kraken? No problem. A wedding cake that looks like dirt? Want the Hulk to smash your wedding cake? Or maybe you’re in the market for a steampunk wedding cake. Well your wish is Mike’s Amazing Cakes’ command!

LOVE it! I wouldn’t ever order it for my own wedding, not being a big fan of the whole wood, brass, and gears aesthetic, but I can certainly admire the workmanship and skill that went into this steampunk wedding cake. The only negative comment I could see hearing from people is that wedding cakes like this one take a wedding theme too far, but as we’ve discussed many times here at Manolo for the Brides, if you’re going to design your wedding around a theme, why not go all the way?

What say you?

(via Great White Snark)

Mention an apple themed bridal shower or wedding, and the minds of those listening will likely conjure up images of shiny red apples, perhaps as part of a larger fall motif. Autumn is, of course, a wonderful time to feature apples in one’s wedding decor. Here in New England, apple picking season is in full swing, so one could conceivably choose all of the apples in the reception decor oneself. However, my own preference is for tart green skinned apples, which to me are much more evocative of springtime or even early summer rather than fall.

To that I say “So what?” There’s no rule stating that an autumn themed wedding must be held in November or that a wedding featuring a wintertime palette can’t be scheduled for the middle of July. A green apple themed wedding (or bridal shower) is bright and cheerful no matter what the time of year. Here are some images meant to inspire those who like me love green apples, though one could substitute almost any fruits.

First, there’s the shower. Basic fondant apples like these from Sweet Thing are easy to craft since they’re nothing but a sphere with a bit of a butt on the bottom and a bit of chocolate string licorice stuck on top. This sort of thing is great for the DIY MOH.

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There are so many great wedding color scheme options out there that I sometimes forget that more than a few brides want to be married in (and around) white. The same thing happens when it comes to so-called traditional wedding options. I have a tendency to focus on the more usual types of wedding cakes or dessert tables or reception decor, when the fact is that tradionalesque wedding accessories and decor are always popular. As a means of beginning to correct this oversight, here is some inspiration for those considering a white wedding.

First, the dessert table. Isn’t it lucky that icing sugar, big balloons, and serving platters still come in white? The creamy hydrangeas in the background aren’t exactly white-white, but I think they’re in keeping with the theme.

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