Weddingbee Blog

Before I do the “big reveal”, let’s talk about my aversion to cake. Ever since I was a child, I was never fond of cake. I love the batter, but the spongey, saccharine sweet, iced after-effects? Not so much. It’s just not my thing; it never was and probably never will be. Now, you’re probably wondering what I did for my birthdays, as what’s a birthday without a birthday cake? Enter the one, the only, the cheesecake.

source

Every year for my birthday, my parents would get me one of these babies and the tradition has continued ever since. Om-nom-nom… I LOVE cheesecake. I think I was a Golden Girl in another life. Hopefully Ms. Devereaux, but that’s another whole story. Back to the cake. Cheesecake and I go way back. So naturally, I really really really wanted a cheesecake wedding cake, but with the cost of regular “cake-cake” wedding cakes, I figured it would cost entirely too much. Sadly, I pushed that little idea to the back of my brain and the FI and I relegated ourselves to “cake-cake” land and left the enchanted village of Le Cheesecake behind. *sniff, sniff*

Our first “cake-cake” stop was Publix. I was a bit iffy about a “grocery store wedding cake”, but I’d always heard really good things about their cakes so we decided to give it a shot.

I was pleasantly surprised. Their cakes were really good, they had a nice variety of options, and the price was fantastic. The lady at Publix told us that because we wanted a metallic cake, they’d have to test it out and that they would get back to us in about a week, at which time we could put down our deposit. Two weeks later we still hadn’t heard anything. A month later, and nothing. I finally decided we should try a few more places before we made a final decision. Good thing I did, because to this day, I have not heard one peep from those people. The next stop was A Special Touch: Cakes by Carolynn. I had high hopes despite the fact that most of their cakes looked like they were straight out of 1983:

source

I’m not really sure what I was thinking. Maybe I had just gone temporarily blind, but they had SO many flavor options and the woman I was speaking to seemed like such a sweetheart, that we had to at least give them a shot! Wrong. This was by far the biggest vendor disaster the FI and I had come across in our wedding planning escapades. We got to the bakery and the woman (whom I assume is Carolynn) instructed us to have a seat and she’d bring the samples out to us. Great, no problem. Until she brought the samples out, sat down at our table, and stared at us the whole time we were trying them.

source

Uhm… awkward. However, I have to give it to them, their cakes were delicious. I proceeded to compliment her, to which she responded, “Yeah.. I know. You won’t find a better tasting cake anywhere.” Hmm… allllrighty then. In addition, everything I requested (which was NOT outlandish) she shot down with an, “Oh, we don’t do that here.” I kid you not, she said that to me like 5 times.

So, next up:

source

A Better Cheesecake. They specialize in not only wedding “cake-cake”, but also wedding cheesecake! I was super excited about this one! We initially went to taste just their standard cake, as I didn’t want to taste their cheesecake, fall in love, then not be able to afford it. Their designs were certainly the most professional looking, by far. The woman (strangely also named Carolyn, but with one “n”) was SO nice and inviting. After tasting the cake-cake, I just couldn’t help myself, so the FI and I proceeded to sample their cheesecake as well. I was floored. I’ve had a lot of cheesecake in my day, and this was, no lie, the best cheesecake I’ve ever had. Then she hit us with the price. At an amazing $4.50 per serving, it was SO do-able. We wanted a custom design which was an additional fee, and also a $100 delivery fee, as our venue is about an hour away. With the extras, it ended up being a wee bit more that we had intended to spend, but once I informed my mom that it was a cheesecake, all she said was: “Well, if it’s cheesecake, you have to have it then.” Isn’t she amazing? We put the down deposit right then and there, and we got our dream cheesecake wedding cake. And the moment you’ve all been waiting for…

Which cake did we choose?

source

Voila! I just couldn’t get enough of that scrollwork! Ours will be metallic silver instead of gold, with our monogram on the center tier, and possibly a round middle tier, but we’re not 100% on that yet. Here’s a sketch of what our cake will look like (as well as the different cheesecake flavors that we chose!).

That’s amaretto, chocolate chip, and white chocolate raspberry, if you can’t see it!

Were you initially too scared about the price to ask about something that you really wanted? Did it work out in the end or did you settle on something else? Did you have a hard time finding your “perfect cake” or did you already know exactly what you wanted?