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Things Will Go Wrong… Cake Edition

making-own-wedding-cake
(photo by my sister, ashley merrill, while frosting cakes in a kitchen that reminded her of the shining)

Things didn’t go according to plan with our wedding. I feel/felt like it was a huge fail on my part, not dealing with stress well and not delegating or getting things done ahead of time. I’m a huge procrastinator and I also was so stressed about the other people involved in the wedding that I didn’t get focused. I’ve gotten over it for the most part, but I’m sure at least someone could learn from my mistakes.

cake-buffet
(photos by Kristen M Stewart Photography unless otherwise noted.)

I wanted a cake buffet instead of just having one big cake, and I liked the idea of having homemade cakes instead of bakery cakes, because then they would mean something personal to us. The main problem with that is that it required work from people other than me. I wish I’d made them all myself two days before, taken them to our venue for them to have in their cooler, and been done with it. My sister makes an amazing cheesecake though and my mom and sister were willing to make cakes, freeze them, transport them from NC to AL, and frost them here.

Frosting them here was a disaster. We didn’t want to have to transport 10 frosted cakes to the venue because of all the potential for sliding and other disasters, but we couldn’t frost them there until the morning of. HUGE mistake. We should’ve just frosted the day before. Things like that always take longer than you think and I had other things going on later in the day. The cake buffet was still great, even though some bakery cakes got put out before all of the homemade cakes had been put out, and my friend/bridesmaid linden made a scrumptious cake that no one got to eat!

It made me feel bad because I wanted my family to enjoy the reception and they spent a lot of the weekend transporting things for me or icing cakes. I ended up making a key lime pie (my grandmother’s recipe), a white chocolate raspberry cake (and it turns out I’m bad at frosting cakes, haha), and a black magic cake (this is an amazing cake, dark chocolate lovers will love you for it).

homemade-german-chocolate-cake-for-wedding-cake-buffet

Garrett’s mom made a german chocolate cake for his groom’s cake which was so nice of her to do, and meant a lot to him since she makes it every year for his birthday. Plus, German Chocolate cake is delicious!

homemade-wedding-cake-buffet

We added a hedgehog and hare to the top of the cake we cut, the white chocolate-raspberry that I made, which was a nearly the last minute idea of mine. I like cake toppers but hadn’t thought of anything inventive or cheap enough that would fit us. I was shooting an awesome trash the dress session and we went in a toy store and voila! Our randomly favorite animals that we used on our STDs. I was kinda worried Garrett wouldn’t like them because they were cheap plastic toys but he liked them a lot!

cutting-the-cake-diy-cake-buffet-weddingcutting-the-cake-diy-wedding-cake-buffet

All’s well that ends well, and it was a fabulous party. Not that I wouldn’t change a few things if I could.