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| Made with love. |
Our wedding cake was a real winner. There are several reasons why, and if I really wanted to elaborate, I could probably write a good ol’ fashioned IB essay with a three prong thesis. But I’ll try to resist the urge. I will still give you three reasons why our cake was made of win, and tell anyone who might be planning a low-budget wedding why I think a simple, homemade wedding cake is the way to go. The first is this: it looked fantastic – tasteful and pretty – and it tasted even better. Secondly, it was cheap. And finally, I’m going to postulate that it was more meaningful than the average wedding cake.
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| It’s pretty, but… icing much? (Source) |
Looked great and tasted better
As you’ve probably noticed, our wedding cake didn’t look like the one to the left. Which is good, because I hate most overly-sugary icings and feel like many conventional cakes have way too much of this frequently overpowering and sometimes downright unpleasant flavor. I’m sure these take a lot of skill to make and the folks who order them love them (and I respect all of that), but they are decidedly not for us. Also, they’re often expensive to boot (More than $500 for something like what is pictured to the left). Our cake was an amazingly moist chocolate, and the icing a mouthwatering coffee french buttercream – a lovely combination and the perfect compromise of what we each liked best in cakes and during the tasting process.
The cake was simply designed and decorated, and looked quite classy (in my opinion). The decorations were sugar buttons – light, vintage-esque and our only expense for the cake (I’ll cover that momentarily). We bought them in chocolate and vanilla from Andie’s Specialty Sweets. Andie was really great to work with, and the buttons came in a timely fashion. We bought 100, but I would recommend buying a little more for a cake this size if you wanted to do a design more complex than what we did.
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| A good mix of classy and whimsy. |
It was cheap
We got a free cake because we are fortunate enough to be friends with Mary of n00bcakes. The thought process behind it was that Mary could take on a challenging project, learn new things and blog about the process. And we would get a delicious n00bcake with a market value of somewhere between $300 and $500. And it would be her wedding gift to us. With this set-up, the cake could have been free, if we were content with some tasteful icing scallops for edging. We opted for the buttons, since the cake was free and they were novel.
For those of you who don’t know any rising star baking bloggers, you could always offer to pay for your baker’s materials. You’re still coming away with a cheaper cake because their labor is their gift to you. Think about your friends and family members who seem to really enjoy making sweets and just run the idea by them casually. If they’re uncomfortable with the notion, respect that it is a position with a lot of pressure and move on to the next baker in your life.
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| Delicious. |
I highly recommend this approach IF you have a good relationship with a baking-loving friend, are laid-back and have realistic expectations about your wedding day and your friend’s abilities (otherwise, you’ll be torturing your friend). Then your baking-inclined friend can try new things, do something they love, and give you a meaningful gift. You receive the meaningful gift, spend lots of time with your friend, and have a significant wedding cost defrayed.
In our case, we had (at least from our perspective – Mary can correct me if I am wrong) the perfect situation. We’re laid back, Mary is laid back, and the experience mostly involved a lot of baking followed by a lot of laughs and cake-eating amongst friends. The cake-tastings were a blast, and Mary was very open to suggestions and criticism (not that either were really necessary in her case – she’s that good). In the end, Mary probably gave us one of our most expensive wedding gifts – in terms of sheer cost and her time and effort. We certainly hope she feels it was worth it, and as for us we couldn’t be happier because…
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| Mary, bff and baker extraordinaire. |
It was an meaningful experience
Maybe this is sappy, but it really was/is a meaningful experience for us. We got to spend a lot of time with Mary during all the cake testing, and I feel that helped deepen our post-college shenanigans, adult friendship. We got to see all the hard work, time and materials she put in to the process and so our understanding and appreciation of her gift to us was deepened as well. She also made our wedding experience run smoothly by facilitating the cake cutting and distribution. Basically, we owe Mary big-time, and we’re definitely okay with that, because it was a rewarding and meaningful experience for us (and hopefully for her) and “paying back the favor” is really just acting out our side of a giving, and closer friendship. In fact, just writing about it makes me want to make sure we have something set up with her in the next couple weeks – just to make sure we still get face time in this brave, post-wedding world. /end sap
In the end, what I am saying is: simplicity is always classy, less is always more, and having a homemade cake at your wedding is awesome in many ways. We’re so glad that Mary made ours. You should check out her Weddsplosion series about the experience. Be sure to explore the rest of n00bcakes, to get inspiration, earn new things, and give Mary lots of props for all the cool stuff she makes!
emily
Nerd. Foodie. Gamer. Homecook. Perpetual planner. Gardener. Aspiring homesteader. Direct response graphic designer. I use too many damn commas.
Dear God, was it ever delicious! I can't count how many people were complimenting the cake and how many were exclaiming how adorable the buttons were. I don't think it could have turned out any better.