Let Them Eat Cake

One thing David and I just hadn’t con­sid­ered was a wed­ding cake, nei­ther of us were too both­ered, the cake shops around us seemed to charge too much for too lit­tle, and we thought we’d rather spend a few hun­dred pounds on extra bot­tles of wine or ask­ing the band to play a while longer!

But, who hasn’t had MAJOR fan­tasies about Chocky Wocky Doo­dah? I’d heard of them before we were even engaged, their cakes are unbe­liev­able, I can’t even work out how they make them?! I adore the ‘All You Need is Love’ design, David and I lived in Liv­er­pool for a few years and had lived in ‘Lennon Stu­dios’ and on Penny Lane, so a nod to the Bea­t­les would have been nice, and if we had a lit­tle more money to spend I would have placed my order imme­di­ately! Anna, David’s sis­ter, had a deli­cious choco­late 3-tier Marks & Spencer’s cake com­plete with fon­dant roses for her wed­ding a few years ago, and we were going to fol­low suit and buy a ready made one. Wait­rose also make wed­ding cakes, and we thought we could just add some fresh flow­ers and ‘make it our own’ closer to the day.

How­ever, (and seem­ingly off on a tan­gent), David is a com­plete foot­ball and sports addict, from fol­low­ing every player and sports jour­nal­ist on twit­ter to trawl­ing through forums to dis­cover the lat­est from ‘the Boro’. He dri­ves me mad, telling me about what he’s dis­cov­ered from a site called ‘Fly Me to the Moon’, a Mid­dles­brough Foot­ball Club fan web­site, until one day he looked up and said “Are we sorted for a wed­ding cake yet?”. Some­one had posted on the site that their wife had started mak­ing and dec­o­rat­ing cakes of every kind, with flavours rang­ing from lemon to rich choco­late, and that they were doing com­mis­sions for very rea­son­able prices. I looked at Mr & Mrs Maker’s face­book page and saw all the bril­liant feed­back they had received, and asked for a quote for a very sim­ple three-tiered wed­ding cake with white icing. When they got back in touch I asked for a book­ing form imme­di­ately! A fruit cake for the largest bot­tom tier, a choco­late cake for the mid­dle tier, and a straw­berry cake tier on top; cov­ered in tra­di­tional white icing, and they also offered to match rib­bons to whichever colours I wanted for no extra cost. So thanks to David, what a find (and I promise to stop com­plain­ing about wast­ing your life on foot­ball websites!).

As I said before, orig­i­nally we were going to dec­o­rate the top of the cake with fresh flow­ers, maybe some peonies in colours to com­pli­ment every­thing else, or find­ing a kitsch, retro bride and groom top­per; then I had another idea… Now, it’s get­ting a bit embar­rass­ing how much I am ref­er­enc­ing What Katy Did Next, and as I write I’m real­iz­ing just how much I’ve asked her to make for our day! Katy had made fab­ric ‘love birds’ in her col­lec­tion as a small home dec­o­ra­tion, and I had the idea of her mak­ing me a set as a bride and groom to have as a cake top­per, using fab­ric which would tie-in with our exist­ing colours and décor. Katy also had mate­r­ial left over from the bride bird, so has made it into a rib­bon for one tier of the cake, along with find­ing lace and a pale blue rib­bon for the other tiers, even pro­vid­ing pearly pins to secure them with. She also offered to make some cream embroi­dered flow­ers (sim­i­lar to the ones on the head­bands) to dot all over the cake to fin­ish it off. (Cake mock-up also cour­tesy of Katy herself!)

Katy also wraps every­thing up in rib­bons, twine and vin­tage music sheets (à la Salma’s theme!), so beau­ti­ful. Below is my ‘cake kit’.

I’m so pleased with how our cake will look, and think it really shows that look­ing around for local crafters and mak­ers can really pay off, we have some­thing unique, and for a frac­tion of the cost of the cake shops we found in the area. Now I just can’t wait to find a cake knife and dig in!

Sally xx