Wedding Blog
Mr. Cheese can’t picture things until he sees (you guessed it) pictures. Since I’m the researcher in our family, the system we’ve devised is that I create simple blog posts on our very own private blog on a specific topic (with relevant pictures), and then we review them and make a decision.
When I asked Mr. Cheese what he pictured when he thought about a wedding, he mentioned three things: a ceremony in the clearing, a “GQ looking” suit, and a cake. We’d already talked about the clearing and hadn’t gotten to the suit (since I hadn’t yet picked a dress at the time), so we talked about cakes next.
Simplest
Cake Buffet
Many small cakes (or cupcakes!)
More multiples
There’s also the traditional stacked cake, but not only is it more expensive, I didn’t think we’d have enough time…
Traditional stacked cake
Cupcakes! When I mentioned this option to him, he didn’t believe me. “Cupcakes,” he said, “Who has CUPCAKES instead of a real cake? And why?” Men.
Simple and monogrammed
First we picked a style, then we picked flavors, and then we had to decide whether to A) make very simple cakes ourselves, B) talk our friends into making very simple cakes, or C) try to order a last-minute cake from the yummy cake place downtown.
We chose the cake buffet and to bake cakes ourselves and freeze them, then do icing the day of. We also chose these flavors:
Our backup plan is to ask very close friends to each bring a cake. We’ll be prepared with vintage cake stands (which I’ve yet to buy) and just plop their contributions on each one! I’ll admit, I love the idea of our closest friends bringing the cakes that symbolize our first meal as a married couple.
Did anyone else decide to go the DIY route with cakes? Any experiences with doing it successfully?
{Check out this link… awesome!}
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Share this post: A Cake Strategy
We are thinking of doing a buffet, but not all of them will be cakes. We were thinking of adding cheesecake and apple pies, etc. I have been buying cake plates off of eBay so we’ll have a mix of blues and greens.
Ohh! I can’t wait to see how your cakes turn out 
We are having the traditional Western PA cookie table, so we’ll cookies for a homemade with love element.
mmmm carrot cake!!! A wedding that I went to this summer had a handmade cake, it worked out great!
I love the look of the traditional tiered cake, but I like the dessert bars the more and more I see them. That is such a fun idea to have your guests bring the cakes. We have been leaning towards doing a dessert bar at our wedding with cakes and other wonderful goodies.
My FI used to work in a wedding cake bakery and he keeps talking about making a tiered cake himself, but the whole idea makes me nervous. We are going to do a tester and see how it goes.
Those look awesome, and delicious! You might enlist help for the icing, though, since that’s a lot to do on the day of the wedding.
Wow … that link is really inspiring! I want to throw all of my cake ideas out of the window now and see if my family and friends would be up for baking!
Did y’all check out the link? One of the editors at Apartment Therapy baked her own cake, and then her friends came over to help ice and “style” them… how awesome! I’m hoping that our kind and generous friends will bring cakes over fully iced, or that the ones that I make can be handed over to someone else to do the final touches on.
@MMWedding: Deb at Smitten Kitchen baked a super-duper many layered cake for a friend, and it looked… intimidating. But, many normal cakes seems like something we can handle! Here’s the SK link: http://smittenkitchen.com/category/wedding-cake/
I know that as a bridesmaid I wouldn’t have minded being asked to bring a specific cake to the wedding. (Especially if it was presented as, “Oh, I adore the [flavor] you make. We’ll do the icing so it matches our standard of perfection, but could you pretty please bring the cake?”
Granted, I did have a bride request that I bring brownies to the wedding for her chocolate fountain and I did refuse. She asked for six pans of brownies, and she asked for them the evening before her wedding. Two pans in an, “Oh! Gee! My baker just fell through?” I’d be there in a heart beat. Six pans in an oversight not noticed until last minute? I’d already been feeling a bit abused, and wasn’t going to add midnight baking to the list.
I love the vintage cake stands technique. I look forward to the pictures you post!
Love, love the cake buffet idea! We had several cakes as well, and I wouldn’t change a thing.
But please don’t hesitate to ask your friends for help!!! It will pay off in the long run in terms of less last-minute stress. (And with a home wedding, I’m sure there will always be *something* unexpected that pops up last-minute.) And, almost as important, I can almost guarantee your friends will love to help. We roped in guests to decorate the ceremony and reception spaces, and they actually THANKED us afterward for the opportunity to contribute to the joy of our day. Far from being a burden (if done in the right spirit, as JTG points out), it may actually be a special opportunity for them!
I agree with Mrs. Tulip! Ask your friends for help. They will be honored be a speacial part of your day and I’m sure they will love to help you! You won’t want to be dealing with frosting and frozen cakes!
I made my own wedding cake! It was a four tier beast. I looked fairly nice (I didn’t like the way someone put the flowers in the top) but if we hadn’t been on a budget I would never have done it.. it stressed me out so much and I cried the entire day before the wedding. but it wouldn’t have bothered me if there hadn’t been 8 cakes to back and get them to fit together.. plus the bottom layer was like 16 inches and it broke in half and couldn’t be fixed twice. I think doing the simple cakes would be really easy. I’d also put the icing on them the day before to let it set.
I love LOVE the cake buffet and thank you so much for the picture… I was trying to tell a friend about it a few weeks ago and couldn’t find the picture I saved before :-/
I also love your twist on it - asking friends to bring a cake, GREAT idea
Hooray for cake buffets and vintage cake stands! I’m a hopeless sweet-hound so my mouth was watering after this post. I LOVE the idea of having friends and family members bring their “famous for” cakes–it makes it so personal and I bet you’d get a wonderful variety. Mmmmmm. Caaaaake.
I went the DIY route with our cake. My advice is to make sure you have the cake to guest ratio down…I made way too much. Second, make the frosting a few days in advance…it’ll keep in the fridge and just make sure to thaw it out (and your frozen cakes, but those can be thawed out in the fridge) before you try to apply it. Oh, and time management is key…don’t let cake making interfere with your rehearsal. We held ours a week before anyway, but that definitely helped. I have some funny pictures of me with frosting everywhere at 1:00am. Which brings me to my last bit of advice…clean as you go. Have someone dedicated to doing dishes, so you don’t have a giant mess to clean up when you get back from your wedding or honeymoon.
I can’t believe how similar our inspiration picture are for cake. I swear I have every single one of them saved, and I printed them off and took them to the bakery when I put my order in.
We did the cake buffet, and it is STILL the thing that has everyone talking. I think it was the favorite thing about the wedding for most guests.
No to the diy cake. I love to bake, I don’t want to have that kind of stress on my wedding day, and will gladly let that be professional. plus its included in our vendor package.
my motto about diy: pick and choose the very carefully in order to not stress yourself out.
Ohh you are kiiiilllinnggg me with those pictures, I want CAKE!!!
I’m thinking we might end up doing cupcakes, but among the top reasons is that they’re a little cheaper and are more likely to be eaten.
Funny enough, I wrote about it just a little while ago:
http://www.12kwedding.com/2008/10/26/cupcakes-instead-of-cake/
Good luck with whatever you decide
We had home-baked cakes for my brother’s wedding. Both my mom and my sister-in-law’s mom are absolutely amazing bakers. My parents have 2 deep freezers in the garage and STILL ran out of room because mama baked so many. It was awesome and such a nice homey touch. Great idea!
My hubby and I DIY’ed 400 cupcakes. We started three weeks before the wedding, baking cupcakes a few dozen at a time. We frosted and froze them, and then pulled them out the day before the wedding. It worked SO WELL! We loved that no one had to mess with cutting cake all night long, we just set them out and let guests go at it. It also cut the need for extra plates, forks, etc for the cake — just pull off the wrapper and done!
we’re doing the same thing in February & hopefully selling most of the stands afterwards.. 
At first I wanted all vintage, but I found some that were new, in that style on Amazon for cheaper…good enough for me! We got 2 new ones, but we need to find more, since our one from ebay came in shards. 
we were also thinking of doing a buffet, but then at the last minute decided to go with the cupcake idea. it is actually an up and coming trend right now and you can make them into all different types..so sort of like a buffet!
If you are referring to your new immediate family (i.e. you and Mr. Cheese), then yes, you are the researcher. However, if you are referring to your traditional immediate family (such as the two younger siblings you grew up with), then there are two of us that hold that title. (After you left, mother of cheese leaned on brother of cheese to research and help her with all the stuff she needed to be researched.) P.S. The simple and monogramed cakes looked absolutely delicious. Love ya.
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Mrs. Cheese, Knoxville
Age and Occupation: 29, Engineering Manager
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 27, CAD Designer
Engagement Date: July 31, 2008
Wedding Date: May, 2009
Blogging Since: October 16, 2008
Venue: Our home and the two acres it sits on
About Me: I’m an emotional girl who loves sentimental things, parenthetical asides, and trying to do things herself. I can cook, sew, am a whiz at planning, terrible at delegating, and totally in love with my fiancé (who will be my second husband but first love of the rest of my life). For our home/ garden/ DIY wedding, we’ll be moonlighting as interior designers, home improvers, and gardeners with the help of our fabulous friends and neighbors. We can’t wait to be married, and are learning how fun getting married can be.
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