Wedding planning and cup cakes

Me and J are getting married in July after 6 years and 1 child together : ) I can't wait being married to J, I already feel we belong together, he is my best friend and I look forward to our future, more babies and travels. I can't (and don't want to) picture my life without him by my side. As we live in England (including most of J's family) and my family living in Sweden we always knew that our wedding would be slightly complicated. We started looking for places in Sweden quite a while back, lovely castles and restaurants but realised quite quickly that it would be too expensive for our economy. We spoke back and forth about different alternatives, but the only thing we could agree on was that the most important thing was that we got married. So with that in mind we decided to get married in the registry office here in Brighton where we live. A small ceremony with some drinks down the pub with a couple of friends and then a "honeymoon/ summer holiday" in Sweden in a rented cottage. All sounded good and low key, BUT.. I realised pretty soon that I didn't really looked forward to it as I felt that I wanted it different (as I hope I'll only get married once). I'm a very social person so the low key theme just wasn't for me. So the drinks with friends down the pub have now become a party for friends in a lovely function room above a pub, pints are now bubbly, snacks and cupcakes, decorations, balloons and music. I have changed my mind a couple of times with the dress (J's mum is sewing a white one for me as well at the mo as I'm not sure about the flowery dress for the England party).
The relaxing honeymoon in Sweden has changed as well. My mum started to say that maybe she could do a surprise party for us which sounded nice, until she started to ask me things after just one day. So to avoid the whole "surprise which isn't a surprise at all as I have arrange the whole thing really" we decided to have a lunch in a restaurant in Ven with my family and J's family who's coming over from England. We are then going to BBQ back at ours with drinks and mingle. So a bit of a change, but now I look forward to it soooo much I'm almost exploding. And I feel that we really got the best of both, we are going to celebrate for weeks which feels amazing and much better than spending a ridicules amount of money on one day!

After the painful production of about 70 invitation cards for both events I promised myself not to do anything handmade again, unfortunately that only lasted about a week and until we reached the cup cake booking. They charge an absolute fortune for cupcakes here in Brighton so J's mum said that maybe she (and M) could make them which is lovely, except I can't just leave it to them, no.. instead I have made some myself to get the perfect sponge and the perfect icing (not there yet, but think I know the perfect receipt now so must try it next week). I made some Swiss meringue buttercream icing yesterday(a bit too buttery for my taste) but I used a cheep and nasty nozzle from Tesco's so the decoration bit looks a bit weird so I'm now on the hunt for some nicer nozzles, oh and some scales oh and a bowl for water baths!!! Actually, maybe £1.50 per cake is starting to look pretty reasonable ha ha, we only need about 80 of them top ; )

Cup cakes made yesterday evening!