The Cake

The Cake is a very distinctive and important part of any wedding, in my humble opinion, and there are two kinds of wedding cake: cake that is meant to be eaten and cake that is not really meant to be eaten but is more of a decoration. We knew from the beginning that we wanted a cake that would be eaten and enjoyed.

I will not be getting into the logistics of making wedding cakes although, ever so briefly, we did consider making our own in order to save money. For the bride who is seriously thinking of making her own cake I would like to recommend Rose Levy Beranbaum's The Cake Bible and any of the Wilton brand cake decorating books. Between these two resources, she should have everything she needs to make a wedding cake except, perhaps, experience. I strongly suggest making a trial cake or two before committing to making The Cake, which is what we did, and which is what convinced us to leave such an undertaking to those who knew how to do it well.

Normally, my aunt makes the wedding cakes in our family. She has been doing this for decades and definitely knows how to make a delicious and beautiful wedding cake. She is in her late 70’s, however, and it’s become too difficult. She announced last year that she would no longer be making the family wedding cakes. My main reason for mentioning this is to assure brides that a homemade cake is perfectly acceptable! As I stated in an earlier entry, we simply could not justify spending $4 to $6 per slice to have a professionally made wedding cake no matter how stunningly beautiful it would be. On the other hand, if this is a high priority for a bride, I will not fault her for wanting a gorgeous tower of a wedding cake. Just be aware, the price can be astounding.

Since we did not deal with a professional baker who specialized in making wedding cakes, I don’t have much advice to offer here except do your homework. Research the kind of cake you want beforehand and have pictures ready that show exactly what you want. Research the kinds of questions you’ll need to ask the baker. From refrigeration space to cake stands, there are many exacting details involved when you use a professional. Some wedding web sites provide a list of questions to ask. I suggest that a bride familiarize herself with them.

Some other things to consider:
Fondant frosting is gorgeous but it can be chewy and kinda tasteless. Personally, I love the look of it but a bride should be sure to taste it before she decides on it, especially if she actually wants the cake to be eaten rather than simply admired as a piece of potentially “edible” art.

My daughter and I have been to many weddings where we saw a lot of cake uneaten on plates or thrown away in trash cans. There are two reasons for this. One, the cake isn’t all that tasty – perhaps it’s one of those sugary white cakes which delight some palates but leave others wishing for something with more flavor. And two, a standard piece of wedding cake by most baker’s standards is around two by three inches or larger. That’s a very generous slice of cake. We decided to cut our pieces of cake smaller, one by three inches, and if guests wanted more they could come back for seconds.

The bakery section at Oliver's Market on Stony Point Road. Taste testing was one "chore" we all enjoyed!

Having said all that, we knew that we wanted a delicious cake so we approached the bakers in a local grocery store known for its outstanding cake. Compared to the cost of a “wedding” cake, the price of their cake was not only reasonable, it was a steal! We looked over the bakery menu, sampled several of the cakes by purchasing individual slices, and settled on chocolate raspberry mousse cake.

There it is! The indescribably scrumptious Chocolate Raspberry Mousse Cake!

My daughter wanted “floating tiers” so we purchased a three tiered cake stand at a craft store that sold Wilton cake supplies. Using the measurements from the stand, we purchased a six inch, eight inch, and ten inch round from the bakery. We asked if these could be frosted in white buttercream instead of chocolate and the bakers were more than happy to accommodate us. It cost slightly more so we decided to have only the three round cakes frosted in white. I ordered three additional half sheets with the regular chocolate frosting. By the time these cakes were cut and plated, it would be irrelevant whether they had white or dark frosting.

We provided fresh flowers the day before the wedding and the bakers used them to decorate the rounds. We also provided a swatch of fabric so they could match the bridal colors. I must say, they did such a wonderful job, I would recommend fresh flower decorations over frosting or paste flowers any day.

We ordered the cakes a week in advance and picked them up the morning of the wedding then stored them at the reception hall until it was time to display them. Total for the cake stand, cake “topper”, and cake to feed 200 guests = $415. Yes, we had leftovers and they were delicious.

Our wedding cake -- beautiful and delicious! Thank you, Oliver's!

The Invitations – Tips for Economy and Success

Spelling
Don’t assume anything with regard to spelling! It’s better to ask how to spell the most common sounding name rather than risk misspelling a guest’s name. And the post office would appreciate it if you got the spelling correct on the address too.

Sending invitations to several adults at one address
We didn’t stick to strict etiquette forms when addressing invitations. For example, we did not adhere to the rule that unmarried sons over the age of 18 and living at home should each receive their own invitation while unmarried daughters of any age living at home should be included in the family invitation after the names of their parents. To save money we addressed invitations to families living at the same address irrespective of age listing each name on the envelope. In one case we addressed a single invitation to a sister and brother. Perhaps this was bad form on our part but we felt we knew all our guests well enough to be excused certain lapses in form for the sake of economy.

If a married couple was living at the same address as another married couple, we addressed invitations to each separate family group. If two single unrelated adults were living at the same address, we sent two separate invitations.

Avoiding unexpected guests
We addressed every envelope very specifically to each person we were inviting. We did not address envelopes to “The Smith Family” or “Johnny B. Goode and guest”. It didn’t matter if there were eight people in a family, we addressed the envelope with the names of each guest. We did this on purpose to avoid confusion as to who was invited and also to show respect to our friends, all of whom we were more than happy to name…with correct spellings, no less! ;)


Penmanship
I’m not going to suggest that addresses must be written out in Spencerian script but, like it or not, penmanship is important. A well-written address is not only a boon to postal carriers but also shows guests that a bride cares enough about them to take the time and write their names correctly and legibly. To this end I’d like to suggest that a bride set aside time each day to carefully address a few envelopes. She doesn’t have to address them all in one sitting unless she has the kind of fortitude usually reserved for Olympic athletes. Speaking for my daughter and myself, we broke up addressing envelopes over four or five days. This way we avoided hand cramps and the sloppy writing that comes with fatigue.

The return address
Although we wrote out every invitee’s name and address we chose to use return address labels for our own. We ordered our return address labels intending to use them on the save the date cards as well as the invitations. If a bride has the means to print her own, she may do that instead. Return address labels, thankfully, are not very expensive to purchase or print.

Weighing in
It’s a good idea to make a mock invitation to take to the post office to weigh beforehand. Include everything you’ll be mailing – the invitation, additional inserts and envelopes, and anything else you’ll be putting in the main envelope like confetti or whatever. You may find that simply eliminating one insert can bring the weight down within a lower postage rate. Or you may find that adding that extra little thing you wanted won’t make any difference in the cost.

Postage
The post office will often have a wedding-themed stamp available. Be sure to ask to see it. There’s also the regularly issued “Love” stamp that can be very pretty. If you buy your stamps in advance, be sure to ask the post office if there will be an increase in postage between the time of your purchase and the time you will be mailing your invitations. Better to know the exact postage costs before mailing than to have them returned due to insufficient postage. Edit: With the advent of the "Forever" stamp worries about changing postal rates is all but eliminated.

Thinking ahead
Print up a few extra invitations for keepsakes. My daughter and I didn’t mail an invitation to our own family but we did set one aside for each of us. We also asked the mother-of-the-groom if she wanted an extra one.

Extra invites are also good to have on hand for that one guest you somehow overlooked but really wanted to invite! Yes, it does happen! So, if the cost is not prohibitive, be sure to figure on half a dozen additional invitations above and beyond your guest list.

The Invitations – Part Two

Today I’ll describe how we made our invitations. Do-it-yourself wedding invitations may be found online, in office supply stores, and even in some “big box” stores. We found a decent selection of DIY invitations in craft stores too, and they had a variety of crafting accessories we could use to make our invitations completely unique. Again, we watched for sales and used coupons to purchase everything.

The invitations we used were produced by Gartner Studios. Each box of 40 invitations cost about $22 after we used our coupons. We bought four boxes so our total for 160 invites = $88.

The box of DIY invitations came with printable invitations and response cards, a backing piece with die-cut invitation holders, ribbon, and envelopes for both the invitations and response cards. My daughter did not want to use the ribbon which made assembling the cards that much easier. While I thought the ribbon would’ve looked lovely, and there are many ways to add ribbon accents to an invitation besides tying a bow, it was one less thing to thread through tiny holes and one less bulky thing to try and stuff into an envelope.

Using the online templates provided by the manufacturer we filled in our invitation information and printed up the invites on my home printer. When all was said and done, we had only about a dozen invitations that were not usable due to smudging or misalignment. I’ll estimate the cost of ink at $75.

We also purchased a die punch for $18 and die-cut an oak leaf in the bottom left hand corner of the invitation. We backed it with a small square of marbleized, hunter green scrapbook paper to add a little three-dimensional look. We’d seen this done on the fancy professionally made invitations and liked the idea. The paper cost $4 each and we used two of them. The tape we used to tape things in place cost $4. Total for invitations so far = $193.

Creative note: there are so many beautiful die punches and stamps available in craft stores these days a bride can customize her invitations in many ways and it’s neither difficult or expensive to do. There is also a wide variety of craft paper, foil, and vellum that she can use to back a die cut or overlay an invitation. Ribbons, stickers, and press-on jewels are other things a bride might consider to add distinctiveness to her invitation.

We had limited space on the invite in which to fit the wedding ceremony information and a Bible verse chosen by the couple. It took an hour or so of playing with font sizes before we arranged all the information onto the invite so that it didn’t look cluttered or cramped.

Happily, since we didn’t intend to include response cards, we took the blanks provided and printed the reception and R.s.v.p. information on them instead. We included this card as an insert along with the invitation. It looked like this:

For the most part our guests knew exactly what to do with the R.s.v.p. information included here.

Even at that a couple of folks wrote over the top of the reception information and mailed this informational card back to us as a response card. We scratched our heads and got a chuckle out of that.

Bottom line: postage to mail the 137 invitations was $60.28. Total cost to create and mail 137 invitations = $253.28.