Ten, Ten, Ten, Two and a Cake

Today marks two years of being happily married to the mountain man of my dreams and I'm blissful to report, we're still head over heels in love and having lots of fun together.

Last year I shared the story of Joe's proposal for our first anniversary. This year, I thought I'd share a story from the wedding that makes you a bit less teary eyed and possibly amused. This is the story of:The Cake.

When we booked our venue, we lucked out. We didn't have to go out and hire a baker on our own if we didn't want to because they work with a woman, we'll call Cathy, who does special occasion cakes as a living. We set up an appointment to meet with her and do a tasting as well as look through her portfolio and her work was amazing. The cakes she had done previously were gorgeous and the cakes we sampled were delicious. Even Joe, who isn't a fan of cake at all, was impressed by her baked goods and we decided on a delectable choice of layers of dark chocolate and white cake with a hazelnut mousse filling.

After the flavors were sorted out, we discussed a design that suited our Autumn wedding and our quirky style without being over the top. The cake we decided on was to be square staggered tiers with an aged bone colored icing and brown scroll work. For a few special touches we asked for burnt orange ribbon on the bottom of each tier and autumn leaves and acorns (either plastic or edible) be sprinkled on the cake and the whole thing be topped with the topper I gave my mom for her 2nd wedding so many years ago.

Can you picture it? I had a colored sketch of it that she and I worked on, but I cannot for the life of me find it. In any event, the only things we asked to avoid on the cake were bright red anything and flowers, because our wedding theme was leaves and earthy toned Autumn colors.

A few months pass and we get married. We go off to take photos and finally go upstairs and I get my first look at my perfect Autumn wedding cake:

Which is all red and flowers and stunted, sloppy bits of scroll work and I shrug it off because even though it's ugly, it's going to taste amazing. Also, she got the staggered squares and my mom's topper correct! We eat our dinner, have our first dance and several other dances and we get signaled that it's cake time. I'm salivating at this point because I want to eat that tasty, tasty cake so badly. Joe and I wave for the cameras and cut the cake, while I tell him if he smashes it on my face he's sleeping alone, and I get my nibble of the cake.

It's delicious! Just like it was at the tasting. While the servers pass the cake, my sister and mom whisk me off to talk to family members and friends for a good chunk of time. I make a quick stop at the ladies room and head back to my seat to finally enjoy my hunk of delicious cake.

There's a problem though... there's no cake. My mom comes over to me... she also didn't get any cake! Neither did my sister, my maid of honor, my aunt or several other people who hadn't been at their seats when it came around. Joe goes off to find out what happened and the serving staff tell him they have no idea, but there's no more cake. I wanted to get angry and I wanted my damn cake, but I wasn't going to let a wait staff who couldn't be bothered to leave a piece of cake at the Bride's seat ruin my night and besides, I had that top layer to eat for my anniversary!

The rest of the night went off without a hitch. My anniversary tier was boxed up neatly and waiting at my table with a note of 'Congratulations Mr&Mrs!' scrawled on top to go home with my mom as we left for a night in a classy castle shaped hotel and our honeymoon.

I have to tell you, while I didn't let it ruin my wedding, during our honeymoon all I wanted was to eat that anniversary cake since I didn't get any at the wedding and that's exactly what we decided to do! When we got home I pulled it out of the freezer and let it thaw before cutting in to it...

and discovered it wasn't our cake. Instead of rich delicious cake, it was a yellow cake with some sort of strawberry jelly filling. It would have spoiled in a year so we made some coffee, sat on the couch in our pajamas and ate some other brides cake.

I never bothered to call and complain, it just seemed pointless and I honestly was more amused than angry. I wanted to get married to the man I loved and once that happened all the little stuff just didn't matter.

I secretly hope just a little though, that the other bride was one of those crazed bridezillas and let the cake lady have it.