Preparations

 

Arrived in Alexandra finally, after a bit of driving.

Dropped a whole pile of stuff at Ian and Sally’s, then I popped round to Ian and Liz’s to visit them and Mother.

Monday was planning day. It was also Mother’s birthday. I hijacked a clipboard and paper, and started my lists.  We pottered around the house, ate many pineapple lumps.  Mentioned we wanted to make asnowflake tree to Uncle Ian, and he disappeared out the back garden.  We didnt pay any atention to this, as we were making a list.  Ian returned about 15 minutes later, saw in one hand, pine tree in the other, then he proceeded to strip a few branches off and spray it silver iwht a spray can that just happened to be in the garage, and voila!  A snowflake tree.

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

We went to the Post Office Cafe for lunch, as a birthday lunch for Mother, and when we arrived back at the house, I snuck around and put cream on the Pav I had secretly bought.  We ‘hid’ the pav at the bottom of the fridge, and later had a wee domestic incident over Mum putting milk in the fridge – we tried to stop her from doing it, but we didn’t quite manage; luckily she didn’t even see the pav, so all was well.  We put candles on it, sang happy birthday, and then tried to eat it all.

Tuesday was a visit to New World to discuss our flower needs.  We sorted out a whole pile to be ordered, arriving Friday morning!

We collected pinecones, and had an assembly line of Dale’s family who wrapped the lavender into bouquets with purple, red and white, and made up the wedding favours.

 

Over the course of the week, we made three batches of mulled wine, which required cheap cask wine, lots of spices and some fruit, and cooking it for 2-3 hours until it was a concentrate, where we stored it bottles for the big day.

Wednesday was cake making day.  Dale’s mum, Sally, had already perfected and made an amazing fruitcake, full of central Otago apricots and cherries, and that was sitting waiting.   She had also secured us the right sized cake tins, in graduating sizes, for the different layers.  We made a chocolate cake  and a lemon cake, the middle and top tiers.  I had practised the cakes at home, perfecting the recipes – including trying them out on my flatmates and workmates, who thought that was just terrible.

Thursday was cake decorating day.  We rolled out massive sheets of icing, and the bottom layer took three people to lay the icing on without dropping or ripping it.  We iced all three layers separately, then used plastic holders to keep the layers from sinking onto each other.

 

 

 

 

We finished by decorating with purple snowflakes and ribbon.  I remember Amy helping make a lot of the snowflakes. The cake was topped by the adorable cake toppers that Monique had helped us make.

 

 

Somebody got a bit carried away with the spraying of pinecones, and happily made half of them silver for me.

 

 

Friday started off bright and early, with me scoffing down breakfast, then zooming off to New World with Mumto pick up my flowers.  They seemed like such a small amount of flowers for what we wanted to make, but it was definitely the right number, and the colours were lovely.  Mum and I spent the morning making up the bouquets.

They turned out amazing, exactly what I wanted, and at about a quarter of the price.   Maybe a sixth of the price.  For the cost of my and half a bridesmaid bouquet from a florist, we made: my bouquet, three bridesmaid bouquets, the groom and groomsmen buttonholes (3 altogether), and 4 parental buttonholes.   Go us!   Mine had maroon velvety roses, white roses, lavender roses, purple iris, purple anenome, and white ranunculus, with a little bit of babys breath.
We left them all in sugar water, to be wrapped in ribbon the next day.

 

 

At 1pm, all of the girls of the bridal party headed down to Solo Hair Design, where we discussed our hair and makeup for the next day.  After that we headed back to Dale’s parents, packed up all the decorations, and headed down to the venue.
We had a brief rehearsal (eee), and I ordered people around to set up the decorations.   The place was starting to look amazing, and I left detailed lists of the things to set up in the morning.
Friday night was a mass of helpers, putting together menus and programs and all the bits and pieces like that.

 

Saturday – Ian and Liz decorated the cars amazingly, Vanessa made sure we had breakfast and lunch, and snacks for the picnic, and Ian and Katharina spent a couple of hours in the morning wrapping the bouquets securely in ribbon.