Wedding Recap #3: The Centerpieces

Another DIY that I chose to tackle were our centerpieces. My husband and I had bought these aluminum pails from Hobby Lobby for about $3.99 each. They were originally in bright colors, but they didn't match the wedding, so my husband spray painted them all white. We were very fortunate with our flowers because we were able to buy them wholesale. We got 50 yellow, 50 orange and 50 hot pink gerber daisies, and only spent about $1.05 per stem. Overall, I was very happy with how they all turned out. Check out our experience below!

The wholesale single-stemmed daisies

The pails

I found these glass bottles at a local glass factory in my hometown for $.50 each! I put a single gerber daisy in each, and put them on the memorial table and a couple on our sweetheart table.

My awesome bridesmaids helping me out with assembling.

The finished centerpieces. My bridesmaids though that the pails needed a pop of color, so my Maid of Honor went to Hobby Lobby and bought the sheer ribbon to tie around them.

Wedding Recap #2: The Favors

For our favors, we decided to do cake balls. They were delicious! We bought 2 devils food and 2 classic white cake mixes, along with 2 milk chocolate, and 2 white cans of frosting. We basically followed the directions found on Bakerella. We made enough to alternate flavors at each place setting at the reception, and this is how they looked on the tables..

Materials Needed:

• Cake mixes (We made 4 boxes of cake, which made about 130-140 cake balls.)
• Frosting (We used 1 can of frosting for every 1 box of cake.)
• Candy Melts (We coated the white cake in vanilla candy and the chocolate cake in chocolate candy.)
• Decorations (Sprinkles, Gel, Drizzle Icing etc.)
• Cookie Sheets
• Parchment Paper
• Any baking materials needed for baking the cake mixes (Oil, Eggs, Water etc.)
• Optional: Cellophane bags
• Optional: Ribbon or Zip-Ties

Directions:

1. Bake all of the cake mixes according the box directions. Allow all of the cake mixes to cool appropriately before the cake ball process.
2. Once the cakes have cooled, crumble one pan of cake into a large bowl. (This is one of the fun parts since I doubt you were allowed to do this as a kid =p). Crumble the cake evenly so that the frosting will coat better.
3. Add 1 can of frosting to the now-crumbled cake. Make sure to have squeaky clean hands or gloves before this next part.
4. Begin mixing the frosting with the crumbled cake. It will be easier to complete this step if you use your hands, and not just a spoon, but using a spoon will do the trick too. Mix until all clumps of frosting have been mixed, and the cake resembles dough.
5. Find a flat surface, and cover your cookie sheets with parchment paper.
6. Begin rolling small amounts of the cake between your hands to make a ball. The cake balls that we made were  roughly 1"-1 1/2".

     7. Once all the balls have been made, place the cake balls into the freezer for about 2 hours for them to set.

     8. After 2 hours, melt your candy melts according to the package directions. (We melted about 1/2 of the bag at a time at about 1 minutes and 25 seconds.) 

WARNING: DO NOT ADD ANY LIQUIDS TO THE CANDY MELTS BECAUSE YOUR CANDY WILL NOT MELT PROPERLY OR COAT THE CAKE BALLS EVENLY WITHOUT HARDENING TOO FAST! THIS INCLUDES FOOD COLORING.

     9. When coating the cake balls in candy coating, it is best to use a spoon to coat them evenly, as well as to work with a partner. In our situation, we had one person coating each ball, while the other decorated them. They need to be decorated immediately after coating because they will dry pretty fast.

Make sure to allow the cake balls to cool in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes to set again before you begin wrapping them in cellophane. They could potentially sweat.

Voila!

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Wedding Recap #1: The Cake

I'm planning to recap the wedding with you all as much as possible before we head out for our honeymoon on Monday. To begin my recaps, I want to share with you all of the projects and details that were done the week of the wedding. Then, I'll share our rehearsal, rehearsal dinner, getting ready, ceremony and reception. But I wanted to start these recaps off with our major FAIL of the week. My husband is a baker, and I enjoy decorating and such, so we decided to take on the task of baking and decorating our own cake.

The baking was easy-peezy..

The cake layers lay all pretty and such in my parents freezer. Oh the mayhem to come...

A few days later, we filled, crumb-coated and stacked the individual layers. Still everything was going smoothly. No issues!

If you remember previously, my husband and I made the top layer of our cake to practice..

It was so perfect! At the time! 

So this time around when we began working with the fondant and stacked the layers.. it looked okay. Until.. the cake began to lean. We had put dowel rods and such between the layers to support one another, but it didn't matter. And after my dear husband had brought home all of the stuff needed to do the fondant, it had become a total waste. Check out our 50 lb bag of powdered sugar!

We decided to just buttercream the layers as smoothly as we could. We even bought these tiny jars of dye that dye buttercream frosting to match our colors. It seemed like a sure proof plan! We were up until 4:00am on the day of the wedding just trying to get this thing to look right. It was a no go. So after 3 hours of sleep, my husband went down to the bakery where he worked, and asked if there was any way possible of icing 100 cupcakes for our guests that day. They said that no matter what it took that they would get it done.

WHEW! I was so relieved that we didn't have to take our disaster of a cake to the reception hall. 

My husband's boss/owner of the baker then called my husband to find out the whole story of what happened with our original cake. After much explanation, his boss said that they couldn't do the cupcakes afterall. My husband was disappointed but he understood. He then said, "You guys need a real wedding cake at your wedding." We were shocked. We felt so blessed because he saved our butts that day. On top of that, he gave it to us free of charge! That was the first time I cried on our wedding day after hearing that wonderful news. And after only about 4-5 hours of baking, crumb-coating, stacking, icing and decorating. We had our beautiful cake delivered at the reception before guests arrived by the owner himself...

My advice? Trust the professionals when it comes to completing your cake. I may have been the DIY bride, but this is one project that even I couldn't do.

Oh, and what happened to our original disaster cake you may ask? When my parents returned home from the reception, they found this...

It died. 

Fell over at some point during the day. Ah, what memories we have!

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