Too expensive to eat? Nah…
By Never teh BrideSo I have my dress (a discontinued number from the Bonny Essence collection) and I’ve ordered my cake (a three-tiered monstrosity of pecan torte with caramel, spice cake with peaches and cream, and white cake with lime curd from Teresa Palko Weddings). Guess which was more expensive…
If you guessed the dress, you’re right. But if you guessed the cake, you wouldn’t be too far off. Only a handful of Benjamins separate the two where price points are concerned. For some reason, this simple fact is a never-ending source of delight for me. Talking it over with The Beard last night, we decided that I’m so tickled by the cost differential because there are so few times in one’s life when one can justify spending hundreds of dollars on dessert.
And, boy howdy, do I love a good dessert, especially if it’s pretty. Like these from Piece of Cake Desserts in Mesa, AZ:
I should add that while weddings should be a once-in-a-lifetime event, many wedding cake designers also create elaborate and wonderful anniversary cakes. Once I’ve enjoyed ten or twenty years with The Beard, I plan to drop mad cash on a second utterly luxurious cake, even if it means that we (and our future children) will be eating cake for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for a month!
April 12th, 2007 at 6:29 pm
Your cake sounds beyond scrumptious! How delicious is that going to be? (seriously considers crashing wedding just to get a taste)
April 12th, 2007 at 7:45 pm
So seriously Now t.B, have you had your dress picked out for a while?
Because I recognise one of those pics having been featured before (and why is it that almost all the models are looking Left in the poses??? Bizarro)
***And as a small gripe to vent, we are still waiting for our wedding album, having married 5.5 months ago. Gaarrrhh!
April 12th, 2007 at 10:37 pm
Twistie, the wedding crasher! Ha!
Dataceptionist: Indeed I have had my dress picked out for a while…but it’s not the one I featured, though it is the same color. And the looking left thing is weird, but not as weird as the huge 80s hair on some of the Bonny models!
And Re:Griping, what’s the hold up?
April 13th, 2007 at 11:34 am
So, we don’t get to see your dress, Never teh Bride? I’ll show you mine, if you show me yours. Heh heh heh. Actually, my real dress should be arriving in 2-3 weeks. Woo hoo! I’m very excited.
Those are amazing cakes. I assume the geometric shapes must be cheaper than sugar flowers, which can be shockingly expensive. We’re having three cakes: a Martha Stewart-recipe tiered cheesecake as made by my mom, a huge tower of cupcakes from the wedding cake bakery, and a smaller chocolate groom’s cake also from the bakery. I’m going to have to find boxes for our guests to take the extra home!
April 13th, 2007 at 12:02 pm
These cakes are gorgeous!
April 13th, 2007 at 12:11 pm
These cakes are gorgeous! I love the idea of going all out for a wedding, it reminds me of the same attitude I see on http://www.bridezilla.com.
April 13th, 2007 at 1:31 pm
Pencils — It wouldn’t be safe! The Beard does have a look at the blog now and again and I wouldn’t want to risk ruining the surprise. Now I wanted a tiered cheesecake. You know, just to have.
Sara — I’m all for folks going all out for weddings, provided their exuberance is related to the stuff they actually care about. For me, it’s the cake and the dress and the menswear, oddly enough.
April 13th, 2007 at 2:20 pm
Absolutely, NtB! Choose what matters most to you and put your most strenuous efforts toward those things.
I went all out for my gown and writing the ceremony. My beloved insisted on plenty of food and live music. Those were the things where we went all out, and the wedding was lovely and all our guests were wowed when they went home well-fed having listened to great live music all afternoon. And since we knew where our priorities were, the stress was nearly nonexistant by the big day.
A fabulous cake is a great choice for going all out, since it pleases not only you but your guests as well.
April 13th, 2007 at 4:30 pm
The anniversary cake? The Annalucia, she never thought of that; what an excellent excuse for the most Lucullan indulgence. And since it is a mere fourteen months until the 30th anniversary for the Annalucia and the Tedesco, perhaps she should start planning today for the flavors, the number of tiers, and the richness of the icing.
April 14th, 2007 at 11:09 pm
Speaking of wedding crashers, have you heard of a new show on NBC called, “The Real Wedding Crashers”? Here’s the link to the trailer. I’m a bit ambivalent about this one.
http://www.nbc.com/The_Real_Wedding_Crashers/video/#mea=84714
April 15th, 2007 at 11:24 pm
Re griping, our photographer is a ****. We were initially pleased and excited for him when he proposed to his lady two weeks before our wedding, but it seems he is only interested in plannng his own wedding (to be in Ireland) and is rarely in the country now! Gah!
April 23rd, 2007 at 4:48 pm
I’m responding here kind of late, but I just wanted to add this. I was very fortunate to get a lovely cake, vanilla with raspberry filling, for 125 people (to serve 100 – I wanted there to be plenty enough cake!), for just under $500 – this was actually MORE expensive than my dress, since I had a relatively simple floor-length dress made out of linen, to wear with a long veil-and-train of Swiss embroidered lace that my sister and I had made for her wedding. The one problem was that I really really wanted buttercream icing, and the cake lady kept telling me “it won’t be perfectly white”, and I, having made some buttercream icing in my time, kept telling her, “that’s okay, the important thing is the flavor, not whiteness.” Sooooo – we go to the church on the day and walk through the hall (which, unusually, is a really beautiful church hall) on our way to the bride’s room. The cake is already set up – and I can see, from *yards* away, that it has that glisten-y sugar-and-Crisco icing, NOT buttercream!!! I suck in my breath, and my mom kind of looks sideways at me, wondering if I’m going to lose it, but I just look at the darn cake, which, although it’s not the way I want it EXACTLY, is nonetheless very prettily decorated with a bit of icing trim and then some hot pink gerbera daisies (the one flower I used, in abundance, for my late-July Texas wedding) around the base. I turn to my mom and say, “I have a choice here. I can go all Bridezilla and stress, or I can just accept this, and whatever else isn’t EXACTLY perfect today, and go with the flow. I think I’ll be better off with the second choice.” And I was! And I actually enjoyed my wedding somewhat – I’d put a lot of planning into it and had handed it off in the last week and so just let it unwind.
BTW, my father hired a Town Car to take us from the wedding to our hotel – he, Mother, and a dear friend put together a “hamper” of foods from the reception, 2 bottles of champagne, and a little cake box that had in it the little top tier of the wedding cake, put this in the back seat, and put a few creatively arranged “nibbles” right on top! (Since of course the bride and groom eat very little at the actual reception.) TOO luxurious! (And we ate it all – over two days!)
April 27th, 2007 at 9:48 am
I wore the Bonny unforgettable # 1506. You made a wondeful choice with the bonny line NTB! I only hope that post wedding you will show us what choice you made! My bonny dress saved me from having an insane alterations bill. The only thing I had to do was a bustle and have the bust line taken in. Its only been a year but I still am hanging onto my dress.. I would like to donate it to a good cause but I am not sure what cause to give it to. Is there some sort of bridal gown charity that passes dresses on to deserving brides who might not otherwise be able to afford their own dream gown?