Romantic wedding at the Elvetham, Hampshire with a Totoro cake

I was lucky enough to be asked by Emily and Jamie if I could make them the most beautiful vegan wedding cake - with a Totoro theme.

Emily and Jamie were totally my dream couple. Fabulously kind and vegan, they got married at the Elvetham, Hampshire - a beautiful 19th century country venue with huge gardens - and gave me free reign over their cake design. They also gifted me a DVD of Totoro as I told them I had never seen it before!

The flavours they chose were vanilla and raspberry, chocolate, red velvet, carrot, and banana - of course, all vegan. Instead of going for a traditional cake, they knew they wanted something bespoke and tailored, made to reflect them - the best wedding cakes are. The figurines are all handmade in sugar and they kept their toppers. Figurines can last forever as long as you keep them safe and away from the sun! Always ask your cake maker if they can make you cake toppers you can keep.

To design it, I - of course - watched the movie and decided on a few elements, so it wouldn’t look like a “let’s-put-everything-from-the-movie-onto-the-cake”: soot spirits, of course little Totoros, mushrooms and acorns. I sprinkled them all over the cake and added some small pastel sugar flowers to add to the romantic side of the cake.

The Elvetham is a stunning venue to get married at. It is a beautiful estate, with a grand staircase - a gorgeous place to set up the cake and have it look amazing - here with the stunning staircase adorned by Moutan Flowers. Emily’s hair and make up was done by Toni Searle.

Their words

Here is what Jamie and Emily said after their wedding:

“We really felt that we "clicked" with Sarah, resonating with both her bubbly personality as well as her vegan ethical views. We also felt that she was genuinely pleased and excited to be our wedding cake designer. This resulted in us highlighting some key parts of the design that we wanted, and entrusting the rest of the design up to Sarah's creativity!

The result was an incredible, unique wedding cake that exceeded our expectations. The cake took pride of place at our wedding venue, and became a photo highlight for our guests! The cake itself was delicious; we had too many layers of flavour to remember but it all rapidly disappeared which speaks for itself!”

I absolutely loved making it, it is always such an honour to be chosen to make one of the most important cakes of your lives! Thank you Emily and Jamie!