You Make My Dreams Come True: Cake

I’m really hoping to get my recaps finished within the next couple of weeks. The more time that goes by, the more I’m forgetting, so I’ve got to get busy!

After the toasts and finishing dinner we went ahead and cut the cake. We wanted our guests to be able to eat dessert while they watched the mother-son/father-daughter/first dances. I already wrote a vendor review for the lady that made our cake, but I’m still SO happy with it months later. She works out of her home, we got a great deal, and she does great work.

I also had a grooms cake made for David – It was a Jayhawk (of course) but they were able to make it into a Jayhawk referee. I think I’ve mentioned it before, but David refs a lot of soccer, so it was perfect! It incorporated two of his big passions, and although I’m pretty sure everyone at the wedding ‘got’ it, I printed a couple of pictures to sit next to the cake to kind of explain it.

We had kind of a dessert table set up and had additional sheet cakes, too. We ended up with way (way WAY) too much cake, but better too much than too little!

Sadly, I can’t remember which song we had played while we cut the cake. I know we did something standard/cutesy, but I have no idea which one. The night went by so fast – If I could offer advice to future brides it would definitely be to write down little details while you’re on your honeymoon, because as much as I hate to admit it, you forget things! It hasn’t even been 8 months and there are so many things that are already fuzzy in my mind.

{edit by me – some of the recovered reception photos were unedited}

We got up there in front of everyone and realized we had no idea what the heck we were doing. We look so confused in the next picture.

{edit by me}

We just cut out a big chunk, broke it into a couple pieces, and fed each other. The cutting may not have been very graceful, but the feeding definitely was. I am most definitely NOT a fan of having cake shoved in my face, and David knew it. And like most grooms, he wanted his bride to be happy, so I was fed nicely. :)

{On a side note, I love how my $7 DIY hair flower looks in these pictures!}

{edit by me}

Next up? The dances!

*First 9 pictures in this post taken by Brandi Coldwell of Lola Jo Photo Design. Remaining pictures taken by Becky of Stamp of Life Photography with some edits (as noted) by me.*

Need to catch up?

We started on Thursday.

We decorated Friday morning.

We rehearsed.

We got pretty!

I put on my dress. 

We had our first look!

The guys had their turn.

The girls stole the show. 

We got some fun bridal party pictures. 

We took bride & groom portraits.

We took care of the formal portraits.

We took pictures with the kiddos.

We spent time hanging out waiting for the ceremony to start.

The grandparents and parents were seated.

It was finally time for the processional.

A step back to the playing of the slideshow.

The ceremony started. (Part 1)

The ceremony continued. (Part 2)

The ceremony ended. (Part 3)

We had a little fun with our recessional. 

I shared our ceremony details. 

We made our grand exit.

And then made our grand entrance!

We listened to touching toasts.

Vendor Review - Cake: Cakes by Carrie

David and I aren't big cake people. There was no way we wanted to spend several hundred dollars on a wedding cake when we weren't sure if we'd even eat it. (It turns out that neither of us had a full piece at the wedding, although we have plenty left.) Last summer I started looking around for smaller bakeries or people who worked out of their home. I came across Cakes by Carrie through one of the smaller bridal shows I attended and loved her cake and her prices. David and I set up a tasting with her for a couple weeks later.

Carrie makes cakes out of her house and we loved her from the minute we met her. She was super accommodating, really friendly, and someone who truly loves what she does. We (I) had pretty much decided that we wanted an all white cake, so she gave us some pictures to look through and we picked what we wanted within half an hour or so. 

She did a fabulous job carrying out my vision, and I was so happy with how everything turned out! The cake and the hot pink cream cheese mints were both delicious, and we got compliments from everyone who tried them! The cake looked perfect with our topper!

Carrie was incredibly easy to work with and exceeded all of my expectations! I'd definitely recommend her!

My rating: A

You can find other examples of Carrie's work on her website - She's very talented!

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A Piece of Cake

To be honest, I've never been a huge fan of cake. There are so many other desserts that I like more! The week after we got engaged, we went to NJ/NYC and stayed with my uncle/Godfather. He asked if we'd be interested in him making cheesecakes for the wedding. Uh, interested?! David and I both love cheesecake - especially his! I'm not sure if he'll be making whole cheesecakes or bite-sized ones, but either way they'll be delicious. And he even has a stand for them:





I think we'll probably use damask paper cut to the size of each of the platforms to decorate it. Any other ideas?

We did want a small cake for us to cut (and with a top tier for us to attempt to save for our first anniversary). We met with Carrie from Cakes by Carrie a couple weeks ago when I was in Wichita for the weekend and we loved her. She works out of her home and is so sweet. We looked through a book of her past work and through a couple inspiration books. Originally I thought I wanted something like this:



Or maybe like this:


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But then we saw a cake similar to this one and loved it:



We both thought it was the perfect mix of original, but still traditional. Obviously there won't be any citrus-y fruits on it, and it will only be three tiers. The bottom two tiers (since we're saving the top one) should feed about 70 people, and I think we'll have a sheet cake or two as well. The frosting on the cake in the picture we saw was more whipped and the texture was more obvious, but I can't seem to find a picture similar to it anywhere online. I'll have to take a picture of it next time. It's similar to this:



Carrie also makes cream cheese mints (YUM!) and even makes them to match a color swatch if you give her one! So I think we'll be doing that as well - they're only $12 for 100! We were planning on doing chocolate fountains, too, (one with white chocolate, one with dark - so it looks almost black, and one with pink milk chocolate) but now I'm thinking people might be overwhelmed with all of the options.

We do have the cake topper for our cake, though! I happened to stop by Big Lots about a month and a half ago with my mom and they were having a sale on Martha Stewart wedding stuff - All of it was $2! You'll be seeing the other goodies I bought in future posts! (I went in a couple weeks ago to see if they still had the place cards I bought, and they did, so definitely check it out if you have one near you!)



I think we'll probably use black and white pictures so it doesn't detract too much from the cake and it still goes with the theme. Should we use an engagement picture? Or I was thinking about using a picture of our rings in black and white. Or just our monogram? What do you think? Or if you have another suggestion, I'm open to those too!