For those of you who know me you may be aware that I love cookies…rewind 20 years and most weekends you’d have found me loitering outside a certain bakery waiting to get my hands on a cookie pop (sweetie covered gorgeousness on a stick!).
Fast-forward to last year’s b.loved b.party and this is precisely how I met cookie-making extraordinaire Nila Holden…loitering around the dessert bar and her hand-painted personalised cookies!
Founded in 2012, boutique bakery Nila Holden creates decorative personalised cookies and cakes for weddings, events and gifts. Launched with the aim of offering something a little different, Nila’s signature style combines romantic, whimsical floral designs with quirky lettering and beautifully styled packaging to create the perfect wedding favour or bridal gift.
Nila has quickly earned a reputation as one of the go-to cookie designers in the industry with an international following. The bakery is a proud supplier to Fortnum & Mason and is regularly called upon to create one-off designs for high profile industry events.
Today Nila is kindly sharing some insights into her style and inspiration as well as some essential top tips and trend predictions for the year ahead…
How would you summarise your style?
We like to think that our signature style evokes emotion through the combination of floral whimsical designs and the use of quirky lettering. Each item is hand made with love and we go to great lengths to source beautiful packaging, ensuring each and every order creates the perfect luxury gift.
What trends are you inspired by?
I find a lot of inspiration from outside the baking world, I tend to follow trends in stationery and interiors and am inspired by design in its wider sense, anything creative really! I love to look at how other artists and designers use colour and shape and pattern.
What is your most popular cookie or cake design for weddings…and why?
Our most popular cookie is the personalised floral wedding favour:
I think because it is so unique…it has three individual layers of fondant on top of the delicious buttery cookie. Brides can also personalise them in terms of colour thereby allowing them to put their own mark on it.
As the cookies tend to have a guests name hand stamped on them they cleverly combine a wedding favour and placecard in one…so couples can utimately save time and money.
What are your cake and favour trend predictions for 2015?
We exhibited at Speciality Food Fair recently and it was exciting to see all the lovely sweet treats that couples could potentially have as favours…from marshmallows, macaroons, meringues and one of my favourites – a bake a brownie in a mug kit! I predict that sweet treats will remain as popular as ever in 2015.
What are your top 3 tips for choosing fabulous wedding favours?
- Think about favours that have a dual purpose i.e. our cookies are a favour and placecard all rolled into one.
- Personalisation – go the extra mile and show your guests how much they mean to you by adding their name to the favour. You could also add your wedding date or text that ties in with your decor in some way. There are so many wonderful suppliers who offer the option to personalise your favours in some way.
- There is lots of scope to DIY with wedding favours, just be realistic about what you can achieve yourself. It’s quite easy to make 5 or 10 but if you need to make 100’s it can be extremely time consuming. Call on help from friends and family who will be happy to get involved and make sure you do a trial run before the big day. If in doubt pay a professional to do the time consuming bits and then add some finishing touches yourself !
Thank you so much Nila for your insights, fab tips and of course some incredibly gorgeous images.
If you are looking for something a little different or for more information about Nila Holden then head on over to Nila’s Etsy page.
Oooh…and if you have a sweet tooth like me then you can also find lots of delicious recipes and tutorials on Nila’s blog.
Kat x
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Whether your heart is set on a quintessentially English at-home marquee, an exclusive weekend of celebrations, or an iconic London venue, one thing is for sure, your wedding, like the real weddings included here, will be a celebration like no other. Personal, distinctive and utterly you.
Our signature style weddings
Whether your heart is set on a quintessentially English at-home marquee, an exclusive weekend of celebrations, or an iconic London venue, one thing is for sure, your wedding, like the real weddings included here, will be a celebration like no other. Personal, distinctive and utterly you.
Our signature style weddings
Our signature style weddings
Whether your heart is set on a quintessentially English at-home marquee, an exclusive weekend of celebrations, or an iconic London venue, one thing is for sure, your wedding, like the real weddings included here, will be a celebration like no other. Personal, distinctive and utterly you.
Whether your heart is set on a quintessentially English at-home marquee, an exclusive weekend of celebrations, or an iconic London venue, one thing is for sure, your wedding, like the real weddings included here, will be a celebration like no other. Personal, distinctive and utterly you.
Our signature style weddings
Whether your heart is set on a quintessentially English at-home marquee, an exclusive weekend of celebrations, or an iconic London venue, one thing is for sure, your wedding, like the real weddings included here, will be a celebration like no other. Personal, distinctive and utterly you.
Our signature style weddings
Our signature style weddings
Whether your heart is set on a quintessentially English at-home marquee, an exclusive weekend of celebrations, or an iconic London venue, one thing is for sure, your wedding, like the real weddings included here, will be a celebration like no other. Personal, distinctive and utterly you.
Whether your heart is set on a quintessentially English at-home marquee, an exclusive weekend of celebrations, or an iconic London venue, one thing is for sure, your wedding, like the real weddings included here, will be a celebration like no other. Personal, distinctive and utterly you.
Our signature style weddings
Whether your heart is set on a quintessentially English at-home marquee, an exclusive weekend of celebrations, or an iconic London venue, one thing is for sure, your wedding, like the real weddings included here, will be a celebration like no other. Personal, distinctive and utterly you.
Our signature style weddings
Our signature style weddings
Whether your heart is set on a quintessentially English at-home marquee, an exclusive weekend of celebrations, or an iconic London venue, one thing is for sure, your wedding, like the real weddings included here, will be a celebration like no other. Personal, distinctive and utterly you.
