Wedding Cake Disasters

and how to avoid them...

Some of the disasters listed below have happened often enough to be included here. Your wedding cake is more than just dessert. It's the centerpiece of your reception. It should reflect your theme and colors, and it should complement your gown. This means it should also be considered a sort of photoprop. When you're cutting that cake everyone is snapping photos. The cake will soon be gone and much of the reception will be forgotten--but the photos are forever. Make your cake count!

My Aunt Gertrude made my wedding cake. She didn't know about the fancy cake hardware that bakeries put inside the cake to make it stable. She used wooden dow rods, which is what her old cookbook said to use. My reception had barely started when someone noticed that the cake had begun to tilt. Then it began to slide. Very slowly, it slid to one side and then to the floor. The cake simply couldn't support it's own weight!"
--Jennifer D. Cincinnati Ohio.

We ordered cake from one of the best bakeries in the city. At least it was supposed to be the city's best bakery. The cake tasted horrible and most of it was left uneaten by my guests. I later discovered that the bakery was so popular that they baked more than 300 cakes a week to sell in their stores. All of their cakes are frozen and thawed out later to be decorated. Mine must have been frozen for weeks! I tell all my friends who are getting married to ask their prospective bakery if they freeze their cakes.
--Marilynn H. Columbus Ohio.

I ordered a cake from a bakery with a reputation for incredibly elaborate decoration. You know, with sugar flowers, fondant icing, and different colors. They built a beautiful cake for my reception, but it was practically inedible! They didn't bother to tell me that fondant tastes like cardboard!
--Jamie P. Dayton Ohio.

My reception was at my uncle's home. The ceremony was at a nearby church and we returned home afterward. The cake had been set up in our dining room but nobody thought about locking the cats up because everyone knows cats don't eat cake. But cats like to jump up on everything. When we came in, the cat was covered with icing and we knew instantly what had happened.
--Lindsay C. Covington Kentucky.

Instead of a single large wedding cake, we had a smaller cake in the center of each table. I thought it would save money since we wouldn't have to buy table decorations. The only problem was, have you ever seen a cake after it's been cut up and served? The center of each table was an incredible mess for most of the reception. There was cake and icing all over and the poor staff wasn't able to clean it up until after it was all over. What a mess! Of course, all the photographs of the reception showed the dirty tables. My friends were like, "where did you have your reception, in a barn?"
--Sarah M. Indianapolis Indiana.