To top it off...

I have just ordered our cake topper. Well, technically it's not a cake topper yet. But it will be!

We thought about getting one of those cake toppers that is made to look like the two of you, but I find them a little bit creepy. They never actually look like the person they are supposed to look like anyway!

weddingcaketopperfiguringes.com

clayfigurines.com

squidoo.com

I also wanted to have something that we could possibly pass down to our children one day, or maybe my sisters, or even our friends. I don't like the idea of something being used once then being put away in a box never to be seen again. If someone else wanted to use our cake topper, we'd be really pleased that it was getting to see the light of day again!

So little clay mini-me's were out. We looked at traditional cake toppers but they all looked so dated and formal. We wanted something a bit more fun, but I still wanted it to be a bride and groom ( as opposed to animals or something).

Some traditional cake toppers:

We also looked at the comedy cake toppers- you know, the kind where the groom is trying to run away and the bride's dragging him back. Or there is a ball and chain involved. I did like those, but I think they're a bit cheesy. Not that that's a bad thing - we love a bit of cheese!

But in the end, I decided to keep it simple. I found these cute little wooden, hand painted cake toppers:

I love these! I figured we could have them personalised a bit, like the dress colour/style and the tie colour etc but they aren't complete copies of the two of us. I was looking on Etsy for some and was horrified to see that people are charging up to and over £100  for a pair! Ridiculous, it's just a bit of wood!

So i started looking for the paint-you-own kind, and I found some - also on Etsy

This set is $15 on etsy (>here<) with $10 postage in the USA, so postage to the UK would be way more. So thats at least $25, which is about £20 or so. For 2 bits of wood and some tiny paints?? I dont think so.

And so started the massive hunt for these wooden figures at a much smaller price. I spent weeks looking for them with no success. Everytime I did find them, they were in America - I was tempted to buy a bag of 20 for $14, but the postage would have made it up to about $40.

My mum suggested getting some small bits of wood and then sanding them down and making the shapes ourselves and I was coming around to the idea that we would have to do that until I asked my Auntie Angie.

Angie is some sort of internet-craft-finding wizard! I'd been looking for weeks, she comes along and finds them in 10 minutes! And the best thing? They were 40p each! 40p! Can you believe that??

Woodwork Craft Supplies sell the little wooden figures for 40p each. And they are UK based! So I ordered 2 of the man and 2 of the woman, just incase something goes wrong. And hey, at 40p each, I can afford to spalsh out and buy 2! The postage was £3.25 which is a little steep but it still means that I've got 2 sets of cake toppers for less thsan £5.

Groom

Bride

I was thinking that I might ask my sister in law, Steph to paint them for us - she's an artist so would do a much better job than I would myself.

Now we need to decide on the level of detail on the faces. As you can see from the pictures above, we could either go for just hair, with no facial features at all, or just simple eyes. Another option is to paint complete facial features inclusing lots of detail.

I can't decide if the ones with no eyes are creepy or not - but I think just simple eyes is quite cute. Maybe we could do one of each, since we have a spare set.

After they are painted, we will attach them to some sort of stand, maybe put an archway or something over the top.

I'm so pleased - I love a bargain!