Weddingbee Blog

Nope. Not a typo. Pi. I’m at the stage of wedding planning where we’re SO close to the big day that I’m basically becoming delirious. Remember my plan to use a cupcake tree to display our wedding cupcakes? I ordered one from Save on Crafts for only $26. It was relatively inexpensive because it’s basically just pieces of cardboard. Unfortunately, that means the edges looked like this:

I decided to purchase some ribbon to line the outside of each tier. When I got to the store, I found some lovely green grosgrain ribbon, sold in spools of 18 feet.

I realized that I didn’t have the measurements of each tier’s circumference. How was I supposed to know how much ribbon to buy? Then, I remembered something: a formula from my past.

I could calculate the circumference of each tier, and then I’d know how much ribbon to buy to wrap around the edges! Brilliant! The only problem was that I didn’t have the radius measurements either, just the diameters. Oh wait, two radii equals the diameter!

I whipped out my phone and plugged in 3.14 x each diameter into the calculator. The grand total of all five tiers’ circumferences was approximately 20 feet. I bought two spools of ribbon, headed home and warmed up my trusty glue gun. I glued the ribbon around the edges of each tier, which resulted in the following:

{all personal photos}

Ah! Much better! The best part of this story is that this project took place on March 14th…Pi Day! So, I used pi to calculate something in real life. It just goes to show you…kids, listen to your algebra teachers. You never know when life will hand you a word problem!

Any other Mu Alpha Theta alum or Mathletes out there? Care to share your nerdiest wedding planning moment?