I’m not sure if I think this is a neat idea or a bizarre idea. I suppose it all depends how much your wedding memories are worth to you. For example, some people think nothing of devoting a huge chunk of their budget to professional photography while others are content to leave disposable cameras on each reception table.
The skinny is that ceramicist and Richmond-native Emily Hunter Taylor will hand-sculpt and hand-paint a five-inch tall porcelain recreation of your wedding cake. She scales down the original measurements of your cake to ensure everything is to scale and the icing is made using liquid clay to ensure a nice finish.
So…Neat? Bizarre? What I do know is that it’s an expensive idea. Custom cake replicas start at $500, which means that you could very well be paying as much for an inedible porcelain cake as you did for the great big tasty cake that delighted your guests. Whether or not you think it’s a good deal will likely depend on how emotionally attached you were to your wedding cake.
If it’s simply too rich for your blood, but you are desperate to keep your cake, try sourcing one from Fun Cake Rental. For less money than you’d spend on a ceramic repro, Kimberly Aya will whip you up a pretty faux full-size cake that will keep forever with a little care. The concept is simple — serve your guests similarly colored sheet cake, and they’ll be none the wiser.
Or will they? I’ve never attended a wedding with a fake cake…that I know of. It wouldn’t bother me if I found out the cake on my plate wasn’t the cake on display. It also wouldn’t bother me if bride and groom fed me pie or cookies or brownies. Have you ever been to a reception where it was painfully obvious that the cake was a sham?
*Alternate headline: Fake-a-cake?
Oh, dear. April Fool’s, right? I mean no one would actually be so tacky as to spend their money on an enormous knicknack that they will despise forever by the third time they move with it, while feeding their guests something cheap and gooey from Safeway, would they? Hah! NtB, you’re such a kidder.
I see you’re an optimist, daisyj!
I’ve heard of brides and grooms having fake layers underneath a real top layer in order to make the thing look taller and fancier — but I think that’s more for practical reasons, since the big cakes are kinda hard to put together and keep standing. What kind of nut moves around with a full-sized replica of their wedding cake? The porcelain mini, I’ll admit, is kinda cute.
Yeah I’m a little ashamed to admit that I think a 5 inch replica could be kind of cool. We had an awesome wedding cake and I think it would be neat to see it scaled down. That being said, I am super anti-knicknack so while I think it’s cute I would never pay for yet another dust gatherer.
Melissa B.: I’m with you on wondering about that — usually Fun Cakes rents them out, but they do come with the option to buy. In my house, a foam cake would get so chucked.
C*: I like to check out knickknacks at other people’s houses but prefer to keep my own knickknack free, so I understand your sentiment!
Here is one which the Annalucia saw many years ago – 1977, to be exact – in the province of Ontario in the town of Whitby.
The entire multitiered cake – all of it – was fake. Repeat: all of it. It did have one groove cut into it, so that that bride and groom could insert a knife and pretend to slice it, for the benefit of the cameras. The real cake was prepared elsewhere and brought out to the guests in separate portions so the Annalucia has no idea what it looked like.
Oh yes – one thing more – the priest was a little the worse for alcohol, and this at an afternoon wedding. Ayyyy!
There was however one good thing to come out of that ridiculous affair: the Annalucia and the Tedesco became engaged that same weekend 🙂
Oh my, I was so sure that was an April Fool’s joke. I sometimes wonder if some of these “keep a piece of your wedding forever” mementos are for brides who spend all their focus on preparing for the wedding and forget about preparing for the marriage, then get depressed once the wedding is over. I’ve known several ladies in that boat. I’m really sentimental, and my mom did a great job on a beautiful cake, but I’d never want a mini replica.
I went to a wedding last summer where the entire care was fake! it was in ireland and the venue did not ofer cakes that she liked , so she just had a fake one. I didn’t mind that it was fake , but ut was alittle weird to have a faux cake cutting!
I am planning on useing fake layers , i don’t need 500 servings of cake but I have my heart set on a topsy turvy cake. this way it will be both cost effective and look killer!!! woot!
Bunny Blue, what please is a “topsy turvy cake” ?
Bunny Blue is referring to the tiered cakes where the cakes are rather oddly shaped and the individual tiers seem to be sliding off one another. Here’s one example in lovely shades of green and yellow. I almost ordered a topsy turvy cake, but decided against it because it was more playful a cake than I wanted.
I showed this to my husband, and he thinks it’s a very smart idea for a business. He wouldn’t actually want one for us, but can understand the appeal. He doesn’t even like cake!