the wedding cake

August 16th, 2010

Ok, I admit it, I fibbed when I said our next blog would be about the honeymoon, but I swear I have a really good excuse. We’re in the middle of moving my stuff over to Rob’s and since my computer (let alone my desk) is not yet set up I do not have access to going thru them. I will just take a sidetrack to talk about our wedding cake.

Going into the wedding I knew not everything would go as planned, so let’s just say the cake was it for our story. It’s so ironic that out of all the things in the wedding I was actually most confident that this would not be the thing to fail me. It ended up looking NOTHING like the photo we provided and the largest bottom layer had cracked during transport. We ended up getting a cake we didn’t want and it was way too small to look grand in the beautiful spot we had set up to display it in.

Let’s just get to it…here’s a photo of the cake we wanted: gold smaller layers and taller chocolate swirls layers. Very tall and grand and also fits with our color scheme.

Here’s a photo of what we got: yellow smaller layers and a single taller layer of flat very little chocolate swirls. For one it was not gold–I was despising the yellow so much b/c I did not want anything yellow in the wedding. The yellow roses were horrendous. What made it even worst was that I did not want to see a single rose at my wedding. Secondly–where are all the intricate swirls?? Looks like playdoh shaped stuff. =(

Here’s Rob and I cutting the cake. I didn’t realize I looked that obviously unhappy.

My sister informed me of this cake fiasco minutes before our grand entrance. Needless to say I was sort of thankful to hear it only b/c I needed a distraction from our first dance jitters that was coming up all too soon. After I saw it I was so tempted to have it removed, but that would have been quite odd to have an empty teatro. If the cake had turned out as we had wanted it would have been the icing on the cake for our wedding–would have made it a perfect day.

The vendor gave us a full refund only b/c the bottom layer had cracked–not b/c they didn’t deliver on the design. I guess it was sort of a blessing that the bottom layer had cracked b/c we would not have been happy with the design at all even if all 4 layers were complete. We could have gotten the cake from the same vendor who made the one we pictured above (Cake Divas in Culver City) but they were way over our range–more than double what we were paying. I guess you really do get what you pay for.

Don’t worry–I’m over it now. I just had to share the story.

cake vendor hunting

April 13th, 2010

Only 109 days left until our wedding! ahhhhh! it’s coming up so fast. Still have a ton of things to blog about and get done so I had better get a move on…pronto!

3 times really is a charm for us. We visited 3 different cake vendors before deciding on Jeseca’s Creations. See story below.

Torrance Bakery – January 16th

They have great curbside appeal.

As you can tell they have quite a big production going on.

Shown here are 4 of the 6 samples we tried.

My niece, Nicole, who is a bakeries fanatic came along for this tasting.

This bakery was priced ok. The main decision killer was that they could not accomodate a single cake layer higher than 4 inches. We wanted 2 layers to be at least 6 to 8 inches tall. They refuse to stack their cakes so we had to look elsewhere. The flavors weren’t too bad but Nicole thought the red velvet was a big NO NO. Surprising huh? They also seem to produce many wedding cakes so they’re more commercialized versus giving personalized service. It’s very cookie cutter type stuff. You know this when their show room has about 25 wedding sample cakes on display.

Filigree Cakes – February 8th in the AM

My younger sister, Julie, accompanied us on this taste testing.

We got to try 5 flavors.

The cakes tasted great, but all the PRO’s ended there. Sunny, the cake maker, was gonna charge me an arm and a leg just for a 4 layer cake w/o any fruit fillings. She wasn’t going to roll the fondant detail on the 2 layers we wanted but was going to hand swirl them onto the cake. She also couldn’t go any higher than 6 inches tall on each layer. Her personality was very dry and emotionless so we didn’t click with her at all.

Jeseca’s Creations – February 8th in the PM

Earlier that day we had been quite disappointed with Filigree Cakes so was hoping for a miracle of some sort with our next cake vendor visit that evening.  Jeseca was a referral from my retreat roommate. When we met with Jeseca we had no doubt that she was the one we wanted to hire. Her passion for cake making and can-do attitude was so refreshing after having visited 2 bakeries that either told us NO or charged quite a hefty price on things we wanted. She was willing to do exactly what we asked and so much more at a much lower cost. In addition to the great cake flavors she also puts a special layer of white chocolate on the outside of the cake before adding fondant on top of it for a very unique taste in her cakes. We tried 5 cakes and ended up choosing red velvet and strawberry shortcake.

Jeseca specially made a Costco pizza cake in honor of Rob’s 30th birthday last month. Why a Costco pizza cake, you ask? Well, first it was Lent and Rob had given up pizza amongst other things for the season and pizza is also one of Rob’s favorite foods. In this case Rob got to eat a slice of pizza during Lent. The entire cake and its corresponding “pizza box” is edible. Cake was lychee with mango and strawberry filling.

oh…you must be scratching your heads wondering what the heck our cake is going to look like. well, we’re going to keep that as one (of many) of the surprise elements at the reception; something for our guests to look forward to that evening. I reveal and blog about enough stuff as it is; gotta keep some stuff a surprise. =)