After all the organising that took place with our wedding, we decided a honeymoon which had no activities planned (only flights, a nice room and buffet breakfast daily was organised) was exactly what we needed!

16 nights at the Shangri-La Fijian Resort…. Lovely.
Snorkelling, swimming, visiting waterfalls, islands, drinking cocktails, having a massage, playing table tennis, reading and most importantly … relaxing.

I was hoping for a bit more of a variety of food in Fiji, including a chance to try some traditional food. Unfortunately being in a resort I don’t think we experience this as much as we would have if we had gone to a smaller place. We went to both fire-walking and fire-dancing, both which served traditional foods during the entertainment. We were supposed to have a ‘lovo’ which means “earth oven”, but unfortunately the meat seemed the same as from the buffet restaurant and had likely been roasted in the oven as we could not detect any ‘smoky’ flavour, which is meant to be one of the characteristics of the traditional lovo.

The Buffet was great for breakfast and two nights we also chose the buffet for dinner too. They had a good range of food and a very good range of desserts, including white chocolate and dark chocolate mousse, carrot cake and chocolate cake, although obviously not as good as home-made cakes and desserts.


One suggestion for those thinking of going to Fiji – take your chocolate with you 🙂 …
$10 for a normal block of chocolate was too much for me to pay, although the chocolate ice-creams they had were a comparable price, so I got my chocolate fix that way (and it helped cool us down).

Keeping in theme with bridal accessories, I must also show the other lovely accessories we included for our wedding. Much thought went into each piece of detail and it was worth it in the end!

Dress:
I love my wedding dress. It was the first one I tried on, and after trying another 50 or so (no I’m not kidding, it really was around 50). I went back to where I originally tried on the dress and ordered it. Well, that’s the shortened version…

Long Version (only those who dare, read the next very long paragraph… otherwise skip it – although you may get a bit of a laugh)
I needed length added to the dress when it was being made, so I needed to find shoes so they knew the exact amount to add. Shoes were one of the most difficult things to find and after days of shopping and nerves about finding a pair that were comfortable, not too tall, heel not too thin etc, we eventually found pairs that had similar shoes for the bridesmaids. After going to the trouble of getting grips on the bottom of the shoes (so I wouldn’t slip if it was raining or on the dance floor), I tried on the shoes for our dance lessons…. Squeak, squeak, squeak – how on earth could my shoes be squeaking?? “Keep wearing them, you’ll wear the squeak out” Many people said to me….. no….. that didn’t work…. So off to the shops (again) I went to buy the same pair of shoes. They only had half a size bigger (and not as perfect looking as the first pair)… oh well…. At least they didn’t squeak while going down the aisle.
It worked out in the end.

Back to the dress, after the diversion onto shoes, the dress is a long lace gown in ivory with a beautiful, reasonable sized train. I had lace cap sleeves to match the lace on the dress, and there were a few sweeps of lace to the side of the dress with detail throughout. It was bought from Peter Trends Bridal Original in Roseville (and I must say the ladies there are extremely friendly and helpful… a lot nicer and not at all pushy like some of the bridal boutiques I went to).

Jewellery and Hair:
I bought my earrings and hair piece from Peter Trends as well. It all went beautifully together (I didn’t have a necklace, as I thought the cap sleeves and largish earrings would be enough).

I had a trial done for my hair for my Hen’s night (and I would definitely recommend having a trial done). After trying out heated rolls, and my hair not holding them, the hair dresser decided to use the GHD to curl all my hair, and I have long hair. This kept quite well, as well as can be expected for 14 hours or so. How I wish to have a team like the celebrities, who would redo my hair and makeup every ½ hour. :o) I got my hair done at Infinity Hair Designs, close to where I was getting ready for the big day.

Makeup:
My makeup artist was another person who I stole from my sisters wedding (we also copied her photographer, videographer and car place… oh and hair dresser). Kay is lovely, someone who is friendly and who you want to have around you on the morning of your wedding day. She does great makeup, which looks lovely in photos as well as the makeup looking great on the day too.

Cars:
When choosing cars, we looked around at prices quite a bit and ended up going with the same people who my sister went with – Parkers Wedding Cars. When I went into the shed with the cars, I instantly pointed out and said – “I want that one”. Surprised… Nick said “Do you have two” “Yes”, “Great we’ll have both of them”.
I think I was one of the quickest people to choose the cars – they were 2 white Rolls Royce’s.

Sand pouring Ceremony:
This was a pretty ceremony my mum heard about from a friend of hers, who’s son was suggested it by his celebrant. It’s a ceremony that is a little different to the unity candle and rose ceremonies. Two containers (or more if you want to include parents or children) are used to show the combining of two lives and/or families.

We bought black and white sand from a place online, and the containers from Flaschengeist (a liqueur and oil seller). We had the final bottle for the sand engraved with our names and the date of our wedding. We included both our mothers to represent our respective families. And although some sand got stuck (and I accidentally spilled a little on the table) it all went well, and we now have a beautiful keepsake.

Photographer:
Brad Young
http://www.bradyoung.com.au/

Wedding Dress, Bridesmaids Dresses, Hair piece and earrings:
Peter Trends
98 Pacific Highway
Roseville NSW 2069
02 9416 4120
http://www.petertrends.com.au/

Cars:
Parkers Wedding Cars
http://www.parkersweddingcars.com.au/

I know… I have already diverged from the food theme of this blog… but after searching and searching on the internet for a bouquet similar to the ones I wanted for my wedding, I thought it best I put up my photos in the hope it will help another bride-to-be. Plus… these really are beautiful flowers!!!

I love double delight roses, they are roses with a pink or red edge with a white or cream centre, often with a beautiful fragrance. Now, even though I wanted these for my bouquet, I chose them for my bridesmaids bouquets just in case they were going to distract at all from my very gorgeous gown. I had a bouquet of white/ivory roses with a few double delights, and a few white roses were placed in with the double delights for my bridesmaids.

Bridal Party – So others can see the roses with the bridesmaids dresses (as for many people it’s difficult to get an idea of whether a certain colour flower will match a dress). I wore a beautiful ivory lace wedding gown, the bridesmaids wore a wine (pinky red) dress, with the guys matching with there fat boy ties and rose button holes.

Antique Rose Florist
61 Edgeworth David Avenue,
Hornsby NSW, Australia
9482 4744
www.antiqueroseflorist.com.au

Now the wedding cake deserves a blog all to itself, as although all the food at the wedding took a lot of preparation, the cake was amazing in every way.

When booking in our Reception venue, we were lucky enough to be there at the exact time that the lady who makes the included cakes in the wedding packages was dropping off a wedding cake. At this time, she also brought in a few muffins made out of the wedding cake mixture for the friendly staff at Cropley. With our co-ordinator raving on how great this particular flavour of cake was, Nick and I were lucky enough to be given a muffin to share. Once we tasted the muffin, we had decided on the flavour of our cake:

This is a bit different to many of the traditional wedding flavours out there, like fruit cake – which, being picky, I will not eat due to it being composed of a whole lot of dried fruits with a little cake mixture holding hands. Therefore we were probably going to choose the chocolate mud cake, although this new and wonderful flavour topped all other choices and fit in quite nicely with our other wedding details.

On top of the cake sat beautiful roses, with a little rosette at the side, as well as roses for the champagne glasses and cutting knife (a beautiful Waterford Crystal knife given to us from my siblings as part of our wedding present).

Exquisite piping was piped around both layers of the cake to match the lace pattern on my wedding gown.

Others said the cake tasted lovely, although I didn’t think it lived up to the memory I had of it about a year ago. I’m not sure if that was due to nerves on the day, or whether the mixture cooked in a muffin tin was a bit lighter.

We still have some in the freezer, although it isn’t actually supposed to be kept for more than a few months in the freezer. So we certainly won’t be eating it for our one year anniversary! I guess this is just one of those recipes that I’ll just have to try and continue to try until I get something that will suffice.

We would like to thank our photographer Brad Young for some of the photos we’ve posted on the site. He is a fantastic photographer, both my sister and I have now used for our weddings. Friendly, professional and able to direct people, we would recommend him to anyone looking for a photographer.

Photography for our wedding (including some of the photos I’ve posted):
Brad Young
http://www.bradyoung.com.au/

Wedding Cake:
Eileen Verde
9689 2752
0408 614 801
http://www.cakedecorator.com.au/

I’ve wanted to start writing my own blog for some time now, after being shown a few beautiful food blogs by a friend at work. A few things have stopped me from starting, the most important was my recent wedding – which either consumed my time with organising or stressing that I should be concentrating on it, rather than spending my time writing and cooking.

So although this blog will be mainly filled with the food my husband and I will be making, I’ll also be including a few extra things like the food we are trying to grow on our balcony – very soon to be yard – plus some wedding stuff to begin with – in the hope of helping any brides in need.

As we both love photography and cooking, our combined efforts are well received by family and friends (we know we haven’t entertained as much as we’d like – but the wedding was quite consuming). Although I am still a bit picky in the food I eat, I am getting better and love trying new food that makes me go “I NEED to learn how to make that”. So I hope others can have the same enjoyment from my blog, that I have had from theirs and I hope I don’t disappoint too many of my family and friends who may have missed out on some of the lovely food.

Now to start with the blogging…

What better way to start my blog off with but the lovely food served up at our wedding. Not only was the wedding a lovely and perfect day in every way, we also hope others enjoyed the food that was served. Unfortunately we didn’t get a chance to test any of the food before the actual day, so we just hoped that picking food that we both liked the descriptions of, would satisfy our family and friends.

Entrée’s were served:

For the mains we decided to go with the Beef and the Chicken (very safe, I know – but I’m extremely adventurous compared to some people we know).

The first desert on the list sounded so pretty and seemed to link in with the themes in our wedding, that we just went with it:

And being an absolute chocolate fiend I had also chosen the only desert on the menu which contained chocolate:

I must say, I really did enjoy this part of the meal most. The brownie tasted fantastic and although I was squeezed into my dress and making a conscious effort to breathe (which decreased the amount of food that I could eat) I was still able to eat all of this dessert.

Tea, Coffee, Port and Chocolates were served afterwards.

And then there was cake…

Wedding Reception and Food:
Cropley House
Watkins Road,
Baulkham Hills NSW 2153
9896 3166
www.cropleyhouse.com.au