Wedding Cake Toppers - Personalized with Love!

Mawwage is what bwings us togevver today...

There are few occasions more exciting than a wedding. Not only do two people in love pledge to keep loving and caring for each other forever, but it's also a great time for family and friends to gather, meet and eventually return home with even more family and friends than before.

The source of this ponderance? This very weekend, my brother Joey married my beautiful, wonderful new sister-in-law Melinda! YAY! :D

Wood you marry me?

To help personalize the celebration, Melinda asked me to paint some crafty wooden cake toppers for the wedding. Apparently the concept is not new, as she got the idea and the wooden bride and groom dolls from Etsy. You can get them personalized and pre-painted, too, but this way they were extra meaningful.

Dress up time

The general plan for these wedding cake toppers was to make simplistic representations of both the bride and groom. You can see from my sketch in the background, they're more cute than realistic, which works well for the little wooden dolls. 

As for the painting, I got started with white on both, since lighter colors are the easiest to paint over and the hardest to get to show up over darker ones. Even just on the wood, the white took about three coats for total coverage. Luckily, I never had to wait on drying time since I could switch between cake toppers. Two dowels are better than one!

Color me in love!

Next up, black and tan! Well, black and flesh-toned that is. To get this basic Caucasian skin color I mixed some red, a little yellow and a whole lot of white. Even though I tried to make enough to last the whole project, I ended up running short and having to remix more later. With a bit of artistic savvy and serendipitous paint mixology, the hues ended up matching perfectly. Phew! 

Hair we are!

Next up, coiffures! Since the bride and groom have similar hair colors, I mixed up the groom's, then added some extra tints for the bride's when I was done. Since my brown paint was hardly being helpful, I found the right hues by mixing yellow, orange, red and just a bit of black.

Armed and dangerous!

Now we're getting some detail. Based on cues from the couple about their wardrobe choices, I added arms and cap sleeves for the bride, and hands and a white tie for the groom (don't worry, the tie gets better on the second pass). Since the plain black tux was just so plain, I also added some dark gray outlines for sleeves, hems and the collar. Thanks to the magic of acrylic paint, it was easy enough to refine these lines with a second pass of the appropriate color. 

A wedding! A wedding! We're going to have a wedding!

For the faces of the cake toppers, the bride and groom requested cute, simple eyes like I made for the Rice Children: Bean Bags with Character blog. I went ahead and added the personalized bridal bouquet of bright Gerbera daisies and tiny white gold rings for both for some extra special touches.

We're going to the chapel, and we're going to get married!

And with the final details - a little shine in the eyes, centers for the flowers and an extra sparkle on the bride's diamond ring (courtesy of crystal puff paint!) - at last the bride and groom wedding cake toppers are ready for their cake debut. But wait, there's more!

Family Portrait!

Also joining this wonderful new family is my super awesome nephew James! Since I didn't want him to feel left out, I made him a tuxedo Rice Child version of himself to play with at the wedding, and he totally did. The thing was such a hit, I may have to make the bride and groom rice children too, so they can juggle! 

In conclusion, CONGRATULATIONS JOEY AND MELINDA! Enjoy the cake toppers! :D

Time to ride off into the sunset!