Let Them Eat Cake

(Post to be updated in the future inshaaAllaah with pictures of the actual cakes.)

I've been holding off on some wedding posts since I'd like to include pictures but I'm afraid if I wait much longer that I'll forget to write at all! InshaaAllaah the pictures will come soon--I know I've got two great but incredibly busy friends working on the project.

Last night at dinner a friend asked me about any "craziness" that happened at my wedding. And the first thing that came to my mind was the wedding cake. Since my brother's fiancee has been learning cake decorating so she and her dad can make her own wedding cake, she's been looking to practice on other people's cakes. But I'd seen a previous cake and she did a fabulous job and was excited that she offered to do mine as well, so I readily took her up on the offer.

And she absolutely did a fabulous job. The cake was beautiful, and tasted just superb. Unfortunately it had a little bit of a rough ride to the reception and got a little messed up, frazzling my dear soon-to-be sister-in-law who felt compelled to present perfection. I had organized the tables in the room so that the cake (which I knew would be lovely) would be a centerpiece among all the other trays of food--so in addition to being food, it would also be decor. (And yes, some guests even thought the cake was from Edible Art!)

But the really funny part was that about an hour before the wedding I got a phone call from one of my guests, telling me that despite the late notice, she would be bringing a wedding cake! Really I had no idea what to expect, or what to say. These cakes take days to prepare so I couldn't very well turn her down an hour beforehand when she was presenting it as a gift and only right before the wedding.

So when I arrived at the wedding reception, there were two cakes. Surprise! And the second cake was a full wedding cake as well, set up on an adjacent table looking oddly out of place. A groom's cake? Hehe, perhaps. What confused me is that the guest who brought the cake expected my husband and I to actually cut her cake as well (we had engaged in a typical American cake-cutting photo-op) which to me felt supremely odd. So I didn't do it.

But since the first was so delicious (some guests informed me that they found themselves eating several pieces) it was handy to have a second cake. One of the brothers actually asked me if he could go ahead and cut the second cake--because the first one had vanished before everyone had tried a piece!

So in the end it worked out, but how awkward to have a second surprise wedding cake. A nice gift, to be sure, but one which should be announced beforehand. And a word to the wise about wedding cakes--fondant may be easy to decorate with but truly guests will appreciate the taste of home-made buttercream.