Rutherglen couple Kelly and Steven Ball proved that they have the bottle to throw an unconventional wedding by having a cake inspired by their favourite red wine... Buckfast!
When Kelly’s sisters, Alix Docherty and Nikki Robertson offered to buy the cake for her big day, they thought she was pulling their leg when she requested a Buckfast-themed creation.
But they soon realised that fun-loving Kelly was deadly serious about dedicating her wedding cake to the fortified tonic wine – a guilty pleasure she shares with new hubby Steven.
Explained Kelly, of Blairbeth : “Myself and my partner, despite now being adults and having kids of our own, we actually really like Buckfast.
“When I asked my sister for a Buckfast cake, she rolled her eyes. I am quite ‘out there,’ and nothing about this wedding was going to be traditional. I even wore a black dress!”
Alix and Nikki approached their favourite celebration cake designer, Castlemilk-based Homemade by Maggie, who got to work.
Bride Kelly didn’t set eyes on the dream cake until she and Steven arrived at the reception at Rutherglen Town Hall.
“I knew the cake I had asked for. We just weren’t sure how it would turn out,” said Kelly, 36. “It was brilliant. As soon as I got inside the reception, I looked at it and gave it the big thumbs-up!”
At first glance, the iced creation looks like any traditional wedding cake. But spin it around, and the back is adorned with Buckfast labels recreated in icing and two miniatures of the West of Scotland’s notorious tipple, otherwise known as ‘wreck the hoose juice.’
To ensure the couple’s kids, Joshua Murphy, 14, and Joseph Robertson Ball, aged six, could enjoy a generous slice of their parents’ cake, Maggie resisted adding a drop of two to the sponge.
“They were just excited to get cake,” said Kelly, who is a project worker with a mental health charity. “They didn’t care what it looked like, as long as it had sugar – and lots of it. The rest of the guests were in stitches, and kept saying: ‘That is so you!’ And why not? That is what we both like.”
The Buckfast miniatures featured on the wedding cake were much more than decorative – as soon as they got home from the reception, the new Mr and Mrs Ball said ‘I do’ to the brew, cracked open the bottles, and toasted each other with a Buckie shooter.
“You’d think we’d have grown out of it by now, but not so,” said Kelly.
“We love it. It’s our drink of choice.”
