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!

Cake Trial No. 1

My fiance and I just completed our first cake trial. Since we are on a tight budget, we have decided to bake and decorate the cake on our own. We baked it yesterday and let it sit overnight in the freezer to harden some. We didn't buy enough cake mix, so our layer is only half the size it should be, but we know for next time! This was our first time using fondant so that was definitely an experience. I LOVE to watch cake shows with Amazing Wedding Cakes, The Cake Boss and Ace of Cakes being some of my favorites. So I wasn't completely clueless as to what to do. I definitely need to practice some more though.

But anyways, without any further ado, here is our first cake trial...!

So not too terrible right? I think we did pretty darn good for our first time!

Just a reminder, here is the look we are going for..

 I think we are well on our way there! What do you think?

New DIY in the Works

I haven't officially started on this next DIY, but my fiance and I have decided to try and take on the task of baking and decorating our own wedding cake. My fiance is a baker and we have been talking for months now about trying to tackle decorating cakes. So starting tomorrow, we are heading to Hobby Lobby and picking up the materials needed to do a miniature cake mock-up. I'M SO EXCITED!! We have a baker booked right now, but we never signed a contract with her, so if we were to cancel it wouldn't be an issue. We wouldn't have thought about doing this, but our baker called yesterday and invited us to come to the Bridal Expo in my hometown that I had no idea was going on today. She said she airbrushed daisies onto a white cake for us to come look at and see if we liked the look of it. Here is what we want our cake to look like..

 

We want her to use fondant for the flowers, but she insisted that we come look at her "stenciled" work. Her stenciled work consisted of her taking a flower cookie cutter, holding it up to the cake and airbrushing inside the cutter on the cake. To be honest, it looked awful. She could tell we weren't happy with it. It looked splotchy and runny. So I told her we want fondant instead. I asked if she was going to use the same flower cookie cutter for that too and she said yes. We weren't crazy about the cookie cutter at all. It looked like a wavy funky flower stolen from the 1960's, and not modern at all, like we want. So chances are if things go well with our mock-up, we are going to cancel our baker and do it ourselves. I'll be sure to post pictures as soon as we finish our mini mock-up! Wish us luck!