It's That Time Again--

WEDDING TIME!

Tomorrow my husband and I are packing up the car and heading down to VA for the wedding of son #2 to an extremely sweet, incredibly big-hearted, dimple-cheeked beauty (who shall be known as "Ginger" on this blog).  This will be our third family wedding in the space of eleven months.  On December 7, son #3 and his Preciosa tied the knot; they were followed closely by son #4 and Braveheart, who got hitched on February 22, 2014; and now we have the wedding of son #2 to Ginger on November 8.  I'll tell you, a lot can happen in a eleven months!  (For instance, son #3 and Preciosa are already parents!  By the time they celebrate their one-year anniversary, little G-Man will be two months old!)

That's right, little guy.  Grammy's talkin' about you.

Back when son #1 got married (way, way back in December of 2009), I made and decorated a large sheet cake for his rehearsal dinner.

The dinner was held in a place that had a tiki bar and a huge sand volleyball pit,
and the guests wore flower leis; so the cake was in keeping with that "theme."

And because when they were growing up, there was always a lot of emphasis on fairness (I used to deal out the colored wooden blocks, to make sure that no one got more than his fair share of the big red ones--which would have put the whole universe out of alignment, let me tell you), I decided that this would be one of my "things" for each of my boys' weddings.  Yes, I'm always happy to have a good excuse to make a cake, and I always enjoyed creating special cakes for their birthdays; so I thought it was a great idea to plan to make rehearsal dinner cakes for all of them.  I figured it could be like that "groom's cake" tradition (is that a Southern thing?).

Son #3's cake:
The groom likes dinosaurs; the bride likes monograms; I just aim to please.



Son #4's cake[s]:
The bride thinks she's Ariel; the groom thinks he's Michelangelo.
Who am I to tell these kids-at-heart that it's time to grow up?

I can't show you the cake I made for son #2 and his bride yet, because I don't want to ruin the surprise before the big day [that is, the day before the BIG DAY].  But I'll just tell you that it's a large, two-layer, decorated sheet cake, and that lots and lots of buttercream frosting was employed.

Recipe for heavenly goodness (I quadrupled it for my cake!):
1 cup softened butter, 1/2 cup light cream, 1 tsp. vanilla,
6 cups confectioner's sugar.  Whip like crazy 'til very fluffy and creamy.

My Kitchen Aid mixer (aka: my right-hand man) has been busy, busy, busy in the days leading up to this wedding.  And in the past months, so has my trusty old Kenmore sewing machine.

Ginger is going to have five flower girls in her wedding party, and I am once again the dressmaker for these little angels.  Two of them are my twin granddaughters (3 and 1/2), who've played this role twice already, in the weddings of their uncles who got married this past year.  Luckily, it looks like the dresses I made for them to wear with one older girl in their first go-around last December, with navy blue sashes and velveteen boleros,

and then again in February, with champagne-colored sashes, when they were on their own (with their baby sister sporting a coordinating dress),

are still going to fit.  (That's one big plus about having the weddings come so close together!  And making them a bit on the big side was definitely the right move.)  I just had to stitch up three matching dresses in bigger sizes for the older flower girls.

I love this very simple yet elegant dress pattern.  On the pattern package, it is shown made out of flowered cotton; but fashioned out of ivory satin, it has a very classy look to it.  Add a satin sash and some covered buttons, and voila!  It's a perfect flower girl frock.

 

This time around, the sash is pale pink, there are no boleros, and there's a pearl-cluster button on the front of the sash.

My dining room looked like a factory sweatshop for a while there!

 

 

I can hardly wait to see that quintet of flower girls in these dresses!

 

Okay, then, that's it from Casa Pearl.  I'm going to be on the road tomorrow, and busy until after the weekend.  So in the coming days, I'll only be posting some already-prepared teasers about my soon-to-be-released Catholic YA novel, Erin's Ring.  (It might even be out in time for Christmas gift-giving!)  And then next week: get ready for wedding deets!