Weddingbee Blog

Confession: the number of days between now and our wedding ends in “-teen,” and I haven’t sorted out our wedding cake yet.

OK, that’s maybe a bit of an overstatement, but just a bit. Approximately 45 seconds after getting engaged, I knew who would be making my wedding cake—she’s a friendor who has made all of my family’s cakes for birthdays, graduations, and weddings for as long as I can recall. She’s handled every design and request we’ve lobbed at her without ever breaking a sweat. Seriously—she bakes beautiful cakes that taste even better than they look, all while holding down the fort in her household with ten boys. I can barely shower on a daily basis, and I only have myself to look after. The fact that this woman is standing, let alone constructing sugary masterpieces, with how full her hands must be, is nothing short of amazing.

Because my family’s dined on her cakes many, many times, a cake tasting wasn’t really necessary. We know what flavors are in her repertoire that make our salivary glands kick into overdrive. After nailing down our flavors, it didn’t take long to figure out our design, too. Or, I guess I should say, designs… plural.

(Shh, don’t tell Mr. Snow Cone, but I’m surprising him with a groom’s cake at the wedding!)

Traditional cake:

I found this image very early in my inspiration research, and my affection hasn’t waned one bit. Fortunately, Mr. Snow Cone likes it, too, so we had a one-and-done wedding cake design discussion.

Image via Martha Stewart Weddings

We’re switching the ribbon to purple, but keeping the green hydrangea. I’m not entirely sure whether we’re doing the letters in the middle, but that’s such a small detail, I’m opting to overlook it and postpone a final decision for the time being. Hey, I did say that I have teens of days to sort this out. I have it made in the shade.

Groom’s cake

I initially wanted to do a groom’s cake, but couldn’t really come up with any design that seemed like a good enough fit to warrant a separate cake. And then, out of nowhere, inspiration struck. I realized Mr. Snow Cone has two overarching sources of identity in his life at this point, so I tried to combine them into one delectable treat.

Personal image

Now, imagine I’m a little bit better at designing things in Publisher, and the Pitt logo is directly on top of the color blocks, instead of separated in its own little white block. Anyhow, I am pretty proud of myself for coming up with a very simple design that so fully captures Mr. Snow Cone. He lives and breathes his Italian heritage, hence the Italy flag in the background, and Pitt is a huge part of his educational and sports worlds. I figure that a pretty straightforward design that can easily be executed on a standard sheet cake is a perfect solution for a groom’s cake.

Flavors

We’re going with two flavors, and that’s been pretty much a non-negotiable since cake talks began. I refuse to not have chocolate cake at my own wedding, and Mr. Snow Cone refuses to not have a yummy, classic white cake to serve to people expecting traditional wedding cake. As a result, we’re planning to do white cake with a raspberry filling and chocolate cake with peanut butter filling. We’re going to have some sheet cakes in the kitchen to expedite plating and service, but I’m hoping even with those cakes in the back, we can still get a nice, dramatic tiered look without having to resort to dummy layers.

Our certainty regarding the design and flavors means that, according to our cake lady, that we don’t really need to meet until the week of the wedding (which works out great because our schedules have most definitely not been in sync up to this point!). She insists she doesn’t need anything concrete until that time because she won’t start baking terribly far in advance of the event. So that, in a nutshell, is how we passed the 20-day mark and have still never sat down to talk cake. Probably not ideal, and definitely not on any generic wedding planning timeline, but I guess those timelines aren’t taking into account talented friendors whose work you’ve devoured many times in the past.

Do you have any super-late vendor conversations? Or is it just me?

(If you’re still in the cake state of mind, definitely go read this post about cake. I promise you can’t make it through without laughing out loud.)