Sweet beginnings

Press, 21 July 1986, Page 10

Sweet beginnings

NZPA-Reuter Louie, Portugal A Portuguese couple made a sweet start to married life yesterday by holding their marriage ceremony inside a giant strawberry-and-apricot - flavoured wedding-cake built in the form of a church by the bride’s pas-try-cook father.

Hundreds of tourists and curious bystanders watched as Maria da Conceicao Revez, aged 19, and a mechanic, Joao Pedro Guerreiro Ramos, aged 20, were married inside the nearly 14-metre-tall cake, as high as a four-storey building, in

a square in the town of Louie, in Portugal’s southern Algarve region. The cake, made by Miss Revez’ father, who is chief pastry-cook at a luxury hotel, was built over a frame of wood and metal and was a replica of the church of Sao Lourenco, in nearby Almansil. It took more than a month to construct and was made from 12,000 eggs, some two tonnes of sugar, nearly a tonne of flour, half a tonne of margarine, 300 kg of chopped fruit, 550 kg of fruit preserve, 100 litres of port wine, and 200 litres of lemon syrup.