Wedding Wednesday: Cake Wrecks Edition
In honor of celebrating my 15th wedding anniversary today, I thought I'd share my own wedding cake. Yes my wedding cake could be featured on Cake Wrecks! But have no fear I didn't make it (I got married just before I started making cakes). Some might say my wedding cake may have motivated me to start making cakes in the first place, in an effort to insure that none of my couples experienced what I went through as a bride.
I scoured the internet with no luck looking for the original inspiration cake. (Edit: I knew my cake friends would help me out, thank you Cathy and Martha for searching your magazines for this cake picture!) I remember finding a picture in a Wilton Magazine I found at Michaels and I still have the magazine somewhere! It was one of the few wedding cake related magazines available at the time. The cake was white fondant adorned with tiny white gum paste blossom flowers with purple centers scattered along the top edge of each tier. It was simple but elegant. Like most people, I didn't want fondant and back then it was with good reason. Fondant really did taste bad! Thank goodness there are far better products and recipes available these days for a much tastier look.
My inspiration picture...
Here's our cake...
I met with three bakers and chose the cheapest option (only $.95 per slice!), but it also happened to taste the best. Let me just say that I certainly got what I paid for... Lesson learned! Around 10 am on my wedding day, I received a phone call from my venue that the cake was starting to slide. Huh? Why in the world was the cake delivered at 10am when my reception didn't start until 6pm? They attempted to reach my baker without success. To avoid having a five tier cake hit the floor, my caterer removed the top tier and began shifting the cake back to center (notice the finger marks on the upper left part of the cake). When my florist arrived, he began placing flowers anywhere he could to cover up the buttercream mishaps. Note... there were not supposed to be any fresh flowers on this cake! :) It was clear by the bulging buttercream that the cake had sat out way too long and became way too hot! For anyone who has worked with me, this is why I set up a mere one hour prior to the reception start time. Low and behold, the venue said there were no dowel supports in the cake when it was disassembled for serving. Kind of a big problem! Supports are super important!!!
As for the blossom flowers, well they weren't quite right either. They should have looked similar to these, but with purple centers... Instead I got these...
While the cake looked like a disaster, it was still quite delicious! Fortunately, I understand how much really goes into making a wedding happen and recognize that something is bound to go wrong. And truly if the cake was all that went wrong, well that's just okay. In the end, the wedding is just a ceremonial tradition and what really matters is the love between the couple. I'm grateful to have married my best friend, love of my life and I'm thankful he still puts up with me after all these years!!!
No cake smashing for us... that would be wasteful! Although I do recall he touched just a bit of icing onto the tip of my nose.
