This Monday

Mmmmmm......cake.

I love cake. I remember on the way to Bryony's wedding, discussing the relative importance of cake in the overall wedding ceremony with my other college roommate Quyen. It was very high. It really is something special, that you wait for during the whole ceremony. Why is it? Because when else in your life do you get really really expensive cake. Often you go out to dinner, and have an expensive meal, or expensive wine, but no one really seems to spend their money on expensive cake unless they are getting married.

What I think is most important about wedding cake is how it tastes. How much I get is also surprisingly important. How it looks is important, but I am not sure how important it is in the grand scheme of things. My thoughts on that subject change a lot.

The first cake is the beautiful cake from Derek’s wedding. It has to be the most appealing visually to me by far. It looks like a cake out of a book on pretty wedding cakes. I love the colors, I love the tiers of the cake stacked directly on each other, and I love the use of the fresh flowers. I would want my wedding cake to look exactly like this, except for the fact it is slightly too girly. But these colors just go so great with the white wedding cake! Sadly, I don’t remember how the cake tastes, or how much of the cake I got to eat. Since these didn’t stand out in my mind, those two features couldn’t have been totally amazing. So while I think it is the prettiest, it isn’t perfect in my mind.

Devin’s cake was as majestic as the rest of her wedding.
I loved the design of the bows and ribbons on the cake. This was also just so nice to look at during the reception. It tasted fabulous, and there were two flavors. One was chocolate filling and the other was a fruit filling, I believe. However, the cake was cut in such small pieces, and we didn’t get a chance for seconds! So while this one probably tasted the best out of all the cakes I had, I am still slightly upset I didn’t get to eat more.

Bryony’s cake was baked by Bryony and her husband. They needed pounds and pounds of almond flour for their almond cake, and an insane amount of eggs. Bryony’s sister Laura decorated the cake with frosting, which also required buying pounds and pounds of frosting. The cake was also decorated with fake flowers that Bryony had bought somewhere. I was very surprised that a cake so homemade could turn out so well. The cake tasted really good. I had never had almond cake before. The decorations were really pretty, and the placement and use of the plastic flowers was really nice. They displayed the cake in the house where the reception was at, and it was placed on a very special table cloth that has been keep throughout several generations in Bry’s family. But most importantly, I got to eat as much of the cake as I wanted, which was two extremely large pieces! So this cake wins for sure for quantity I ingested. I was little sick afterwards, though. Oh, the price I have to pay.

Jeff and his wife decided to go with a more low key approach to cake, which I have to say I appreciated. The whole tradition of cutting the cake in a big ceremony seems a little silly. It’s just cake. (Although really expensive cake, I know). Wouldn’t it be just as interesting to have crazy desert pastries, or some other really expensive dessert to end the wedding? Jeff and his wife had several different kinds of bunt cakes, of which I had the chocolate, and it was very good. But my favorite dessert they had were the chocolate chip and mint meringues. They were such a great flavor combo. Definitely a winner for inventiveness.

Next, I plan to look at all the couples side by side, and talk about how each of their weddings fit there personalities. That might not be until later in the week.

posted by This Monday Morning @ 5:32 PM