Brixton, South West London, is a hidden gem for wedding venues.
From the awesome 100 Barrington (where we are vendor partners), to The Ritzy, Brixton is not short of gorgeous spaces to host a London City wedding.
One such precious space is Upstairs at the Department Store, where this delightful wedding took place.
Set in the heart of Brixton, on Stockwell Road, Upstairs at the Department Store is a members club which boasts three gorgeous event spaces.
With a room that seats as few as 14 guests and one that holds up to 100, this is a great venue for both micro and macro weddings.
This wedding reception was held in The Dome, the smallest event space at Upstairs.
In true micro wedding fashion, the couple hosted a lovely wedding breakfast for just 7 guests.
Where they saved on having a smaller wedding, they spared no expense for all the finer details that made their wedding so gorgeous!
I was commissioned to make Camelia and Courtney’s wedding cake by the bride’s brother, who was buying the cake for the couple as a gift.
He sent across the colour scheme with some rough ideas about what the cake should look like and a stipulation that the covering MUST be buttercream and not fondant!
With this info, I set about designing a cream cake with peach and blush marble tones.
To add a bit of glamour, I added a few specks of edible gold leaf, just to make the cake glisten a bit.
With a muted foundation, the pops of colour and vibrancy were going to come from the florals.
Fresh flowers are always a great way to add colour to a cake.
Ideally, I like the cake to be in harmony with the rest of the wedding features, but this isn’t always possible.
Photo by Hannah Christine Photography.
In this case, we had six weeks to go from enquiry to wedding date. Considering that many of the details were being planned from outside London, there was no way I was going to be able to liaise with the florist to arrange for her to leave us some flowers to dress the cake.
Not wanting the cake to look vastly different from the rest of the florals being used, I went to Indaco’s Flowers, Dulwich armed with the colour scheme I was sent and picked up anything I could find that matched.
I always dress the cake with flowers once I’ve reached the venue, but on this occasion, I was further hampered by the fact that it was the middle of August and it was of course, the hottest day of the year.
Buttercream and heat don’t have the best relationship, so I had all manner of contingencies to get the cake there in one piece and to last until cutting time!
I drove to Brixton with the air con on full blast, praying all the way there.
Once I reached the venue, I set up the cake in the coolest room, the basement.
This meant I didn’t get to see whether I’d hit the right cord with the flower selection. More prayers!
The plan was for the cake to stay in the basement until the couple arrived, at which point, the staff would relocate the cake up to The Dome.
Once set up, I was ecstatic with how the cake looked and could only hope and pray it would make it’s way safely to The Dome, which it did! Look at it!
Here it is, in situ.
What I love about this cake, is that it wasn’t stuffed in a corner somewhere on a white tablecloth.
It was placed on a gorgeous gold drinks trolley, which I think complimented the gold leaf on the cake beautifully.
With so few guests, I was surprised that Camelia’s brother went for this large three tier, which would be perfect for 100 guests, but he wanted it to be impactful.
The cake certainly didn’t go to waste as all the guests took some home and what was left was distributed to neighbours.
I should never have favourites, but this cake does hold a special place in my heart, because the review was just out of this world.