The Tiffany Blue Wedding

Last weekend was my sister-in-law's wedding. It was the second wedding in the family (after ours), but since she's the first girl in the family, it was our first time organising a solemnization ceremony plus a wedding reception. And it was not an easy wedding to organize! Yours truly being 38weeks pregnant didn't really help either. But that didn't stop me from being the official baker for the wedding. I camped out in my kitchen in front of my oven every single day, the week before the event. Did I also mention that since it was also my final week in the office, I was jumping from one meeting to another (everyone in the office wanted a piece of me before I left), handling my handover to my colleagues who were going to cover for me during my absence, and also squeezing some time during lunch to review last minute documents??!! Combine that with coming home and baking till the wee hours of the night - it was quite a miracle that I could still stand on my own two feet by the end of the week. Thanks Hubby for the foot massages every night!

So after the disastrous attempt on Tiffany Blue baby donuts (look and colour wise - taste wise they were excellent!), I decided to just stick to baking things I know best. And that would be cakes, cookies and macarons. As for the dessert table, I designed it based on a wedding set that I had purchased during our recent trip to Houston.

Tiffany blue with black damask.

Although Tiffany Blue is somewhat an "in" colour in other places, it has never really arrived in Malaysia. It wasn't easy explaining the colour to the printable designers and finding matching candy and decorations. Even the closest ribbon colour I could get to it was Aqua Green and I found it a tad too greenish for my liking. And try explaining the colour to the elderlies - even my in laws ended up with buying cloth material one shade too green off Tiffany Blue, but then ordered blue decorations, blue wedding favours and turquoise tents! In the end, we had all shades of blue - carca marba!

Printable designer never really got the right colour. Oh well, can't be too choosy! These are frames for table decorations.

Enlisted a friend to help out with the paper tissue poms. Again, I had to use baby blue paper as it was the closest thing to Tiffany Blue.

Next, on to the baking! This was relatively easier to manage since I was the one controlling the colour. First up, macarons! Macarons are usually a big hit with my dessert tables since I make mine small bite sized so they are usually the first to go. I decided that 3 batches should be sufficient for the night, and that gave me about 175 pieces of assembled macarons, minus the rejected shells.

Rows and rows of Tiffany Blue macarons, waiting to be popped into the oven.

The end result. Loving the colour and the consistency in size.

I have had numerous requests to share the recipe for these macarons. I will try to do so in a different post. But I should warn you that it's not just the recipe that matters. All those evenly piped circles that you see on the baking pans - those are from batches and batches of practice. And you need to know the consistency of the batter when you stir it. Stir it too much, and it gets runny and you end up with imperfect circles. Stir it too little and you get pointy tips and bumps on the macaron shells. Sounds complicated enough?

Next up, cupcakes!

Vanilla cupcakes with Tiffany Blue buttercream (although still a bit too green for my liking) adorned with white fondant butterflies.

Personalized cookies were next on my list. The monogram design below is used everywhere in the wedding - the wedding favour tags, personalized chocolate bars and water bottles. So I decided to use the same design for my cookies, After much back and forth with the edible image printer, they finally printed the right shade of colour for me.

Round cookies with white fondant. Cut out the edible image and stuck them on top of the fondant.

Loving the professional look of these cookies!

Last but not least in my baking list, Tiffany Blue mini cakes! Initially I wanted to replicate the Tiffany Blue signature box and bow. I even made a few test pieces before the event, but every seasoned baker knows how much easier it is to fondant wrap a round cake instead of a square cake. As I was going to make so many of these; and since cakes (and cupcakes) are best made just a day before they are eaten, I didn't have the luxury of time!

Tiffany Blue box test piece.

Round Tiffany Blue mini cakes.

Covered the cakes with fondant all by myself but fortunately I had help with the fondant ribbons as I was so busy juggling the cupcakes at the same time!

Not in pictures above are chocolate covered oreos and chocolate covered pretzels. Don't know whether they count as baking but essentially I used a wedding themed oreo mould (available in baking shops) and covered Oreos with Tiffany Blue coloured chocolate (again, not the right colour!), whilst the pretzels were store bought and covered with white melted chocolate.

The day of the event finally arrived and we were greeted with a bright and sunny morning. I, of course was not fooled by the sun since I had been charting the weather for the past few weeks. (It rained heavily during Aiden's kindy graduation which was a day before the event.) In the afternoon, it continued to be bright and sunny, and deep down in my heart I knew that it was not a good sign. But really, how can you control the weather? So I proceeded with preparing my dessert table. The venue for the wedding was the Cahaya SPK clubhouse, about 5 minutes away from our house, but it was quite an effort to cart everything between these two locations.

The Tiffany Blue (bare) dessert table.

Tiffany Blue really looks classy in the day sunlight. However, the colour didn't really make much impact in the night, in my opinion.

Paper fans and paper poms as the backdrop. I used matching food tags, damask cake base and damask doily paper to match the wedding set.

Since I had to pre-prepare the dessert table before getting ready for the wedding, the table was ready approximately 3 house before the start of the event (after Maghrib). Which explains why I refrained from putting the baked goods and candy on the table at this point.

Oh, that gut feeling I had about the weather? Of course Murphy's Law stepped in and we were "blessed" with heavy rain at about 6pm that afternoon. It poured cats and dogs, and since everyone in the family was at home getting ready, it was the clubhouse employees who helped to minimize the damage. Thanks to them, although the dessert table board fell and hit the table, they managed to save my apothecary jars and serving plates. Hubby immediately rushed out to the clubhouse at the sight of the rain, and when he came back, he reported that everything was an absolute mess. All of my dessert table decorations were on the ground submerged in rain water which came up to his ankles. Not only that, the akad nikah area was soaked with rain (it was supposed to be an outdoor solemnization) and some of the flower vases which decorated the dias had fell and broke. Hubby wanted to arrange for Plan B which was to shift the solemnization to a sheltered banquet hall, but since it was so close to the start of the wedding, the clubhouse couldn't accommodate to our request. I swore, the bride was at the verge of tears when she heard about the disaster. Yes, it was definitely a wedding full of drama.

Thankfully, after the initial heavy downpour, it soon reduced to a drizzle and I braved the slight rain to see whether I could fix the dessert table. I tried to salvage whatever I could, and with the help of very very supportive family members, I redecorated the dessert table in less than half an hour (record breaking time!) and we managed to put the solemnization area back to somewhat its original state, albeit some missing vases and flowers. And of course, we hoped that the carpets would dry up in time before the tok kadi arrived!

The dessert table after the disastrous rain.

Some food tags and paper fans were ruined, but I salvaged whatever I could. Thankfully all the baked goods and candy were safe in waterproof containers. If the dessert table had been loaded, we would have to throw away all of my baking efforts!

Personalized cookies in action. Excuse the arrangement of the cookies, family members helped me fill the platters so I didn't have time to do a quality check.

In this picture, cupcakes, personalized cookies, macarons and mini cakes. You can even see matching gumballs in the glass container and matching candy sticks in the medium apothecary jar, both on the far right.

Personalized kit kats in a serving platter, and mini cakes on a matching black damask cake base.

Candy sticks and pretzels dipped in white chocolate in the apothecary jars. Down right you can barely see the matching rock candy.

All Tiffany Blue candy were sourced from the US. That was another drama, the shipment got delayed due to resource issues with MAS Cargo, but because they knew the package was super important for the wedding, they kept an eye on it and even arranged for a special personal delivery just a day before the event. Kudos to the MAS Cargo and Pos Malaysia team!

Solemnization was held at the clubhouse outdoor deck, overlooking the lake. That's Hubby in the middle of the picture, overseeing the whole event, walkie talkie in hand!

The newlyweds.

Instead of flower girls, we had Aiden and Darwish as bunga manggar boys.

Handsome Aiden! Drama King - he fell asleep during the solemnization (after telling everyone "This is too boring!") and I had to threaten to throw away his iPad just to get him to wake up so he could execute his bunga manggar duties!

Now that the wedding is over, I have nothing else to distract me from looking forward (looking forward ke??) to the imminent labour of love - pun intended! Wish me luck!