Weddingbee Blog

Remember that cake deal I told you about at Sugarland? Well, I went there recently with my work mom. If you don’t have a work mom, you should totally get one. She is someone I work with (obviously), but I love her so much! She is so fun to work with and so generous and kind. I don’t remember how the term “work mom” came up, but I think she said something like “I’m old enough to be your mom!” So now she is my work mom—yay!

Anyway, we went to Sugarland to taste the cakes. Mr. Magic and I had already tried them (last December), and he was out of town. Plus, Work Mom had offered to buy us our wedding cake as our present!!!

But when we got there, we were greeted by the wedding-cake consultant with this:

Source

Le sigh. Sometimes it feels like nothing is easy when it comes to wedding planning. She informed us that since our wedding falls on one of the “top eight most popular wedding weekends of 2011,” the special does not apply to that weekend. She would have contacted me to let me know before we came to our appointment, but she did not have my number or email. She was very sorry (and she seemed a bit scared of our reaction to this news).

She then explained that for our particular weekend, Sugarland could only accommodate orders with a $500 minimum. So I was expecting to get a basic three-tiered cake for $199, and she was telling me I would have to spend $300 more. Huh?

Then she said, “Would you like to taste some cakes?”

Um, yes, please. At this point, $500 was ringing and flashing and spinning in my head…but I am always down for eating. Plus, since we were not able to get the special (which only applied to French vanilla and double chocolate cakes), we could taste a wider variety of cakes. And yes, we’d like some coffee too, thanks.

Also, because I was so bamboozled by this bad news, I forgot to take pictures. You will have to do with these I stole off the interwebs.

Source via Taylor Takes a Taste

So we tasted some cakes, including:

1. Red velvet with cream cheese frosting.
2. Carrot cake with cream cheese frosting.
3. The most delicious strawberry cake ever with yummy buttercream frosting. While it is not really appropriate for a fall wedding, I think it would be mad yummy for a shower, hint hint hint hint HINT. (I’m looking at you, sister of mine.)
4. Double chocolate cake.
5. French vanilla cake.
6. Fluffy light chiffon orangey cake that my work mom really loved.

And we chatted about the special, and what to do, and how I’m not really super into cake, so while it would be nice to have some type of wedding cake for looks and cutting purposes, I really am not into it enough to spend five hundred American dollars on it.

So. Our consultant came back and I told it to her straight. I told her I had been here last year and already put a deposit down on an “on special” cake then, but then we decided to push the wedding back a year so we got our deposit back. I told her I wasn’t even that into cake, so while their cakes were lovely and yummy, um, spending $500 was a bit insane for something I didn’t really care about. And, I told her we were having a brownie buffet anyway (because, hello, brownies are so yummy), so we didn’t even need $500 worth of cake.

She said, “Let me go talk to someone. I’ll be right back.” And this is where I realized we were negotiating. Oh Lord, help me, am I bad at negotiating! I get all sweaty and I stammer a lot and usually end up with a worse deal than what I started out with. Le sigh. Again.

It ended up being OK, though. They waived the $500 minimum, so we are now getting a smaller three-tiered cake (six inches, eight inches, ten inches), which is enough to feed 50 people at $5 a slice. (Interestingly enough, I think it is actually enough to feed 80 based on the ad I posted here, but they only charged us for 50. Hmmmmm…) So that’s $250. They are throwing in a milk-glass stand for free, which is awesome because I can use the two other milk-glass stands I have for the brownies! I also ordered a groom’s cake, which I will tell you about at another time because someone’s future husband sometimes reads this blog. And we haven’t decided on the final flavor or design yet, but they told me they have a pumpkin chocolate chip flavor that is super popular. I guess we’ll have to find time to go back and taste that when it is available. Darn.

So, I guess it all worked out in the end. I do think Sugarland should modify their ad to say something like “Some exceptions apply.” Apparently, some other brides were very angry when they learned they were not able to get the special. And it looks like we will now have multiple kinds of brownies, a wedding cake, and a groom’s cake. Oh, and s’mores too. Sheesh, I hope our guests like sweets!

Have you ever run into an “exception” or other problems when planning your wedding because your wedding falls on a popular weekend?