Wedding Toppers from The Small Object

My friends and I went to IndieWed today. My favorite discovery of the event was the custom wedding toppers from The Small Object.

{Source}

*WE* Have Good Taste!

Look what I just designed using the WEtv Cake Maker tool:

 

{Source: WEtv via Bklyn Bride}

Ha! Right on.

Pretty Cake

So girly. So cute.

Image: Here

The Sugar Syndicate has updated their online portfolio. I know that I am partial, but I love these new additions. I wish that I could see the weddings that inspired them!

I really like this one:

 Images: Here

One Month Ago Today...

I can't believe it's been a month. Only 11 months + Eternity to go! Ha, Ha.

(I need my damn pro pix already.)

Since we didn't get any of this:

We're going to celebrate with this:

We ordered a small white cake with coconut buttercream frosting. I told the baker to "just toss our initials on there with some circles or something," thinking that she'd draw buttercream circles or something equally as simple. Nope. Love her!

A Baker with Balls

My friend Tracey is eagerly awaiting our cake update.

I was telling her the scoop on chat the other day, but she wanted to wait for the post! :)

We had a cake tasting with The Sugar Syndicate (TSS) on Saturday. TSS is the independent baker with the cute logo that I mentioned in last week's cake post.

Oh. My. God. The cakes were delicious. We tried:

• Chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream.
• White cake with coconut buttercream.
• Red velvet with cream cheese filling.

I thought that Andy was going to cry when he tried the white cake.

I am 99% sure that it we're going with her. Her cakes were tasty AND $affordable$. Also, she gives you a gift certificate to use on your first anniversary that is good for a copy of the top tier of your cake. How nice is that?

So, we've decided on the design below, with three tiers and ivory fondant. A few of the smaller balls will be colored to match the circles on the invitations. I think that it's going to be great!

Image: Brides.com

I would like to just sign on the dotted line, but I am worried that I should do at least another comparison. As I typed that, I realized that it sounds like I am looking for an excuse to eat more cake! But seriously, with the exception of caterers, I haven't done any comparison shopping with my vendors. I am kind of a lazy bride.

Rock On!

I've scheduled a cake testing at The Sugar Syndicate on March 15. Dig this...they can make my favorite ball cake for $4 less than the previous cake quote! I want to hire TSS for the logo alone:


I hope that the cake is delicious because the owner's e-mail response to my inquiry was incredibly detailed. I'm all about vendors who allow you to plan your wedding on the DL during lunch. I mean, do I really need to call you in person to be told that you're out of my miniature price range? Anyway, what's even cooler is that The Sugar Syndicate is 1/3 of a pastry co-op called "Sweet Collective." Some of you may recall them from this article from Daily Candy Chicago.

How cool will it be if we can get our cool cake and support an independent woman-owned business? Talk about having your decorative cake and eating it too! Girl Power!

Cups o' Cake

The wedding process seems so anti-climatic now that my big decisions are made. As much as I longed to be at this point, having "lose 40 pounds" and "save thousands of dollars" as my only "To Dos" makes me feel a little lost. Might as well look at pretty things to pique my interest :)

I usually serve cupcakes at parties and showers because they are cute, easy, cheap, and disposable. I typically jazz them up by making custom tags to decorate them. Here are some examples of some of my old shower and bachelorette projects:










How much time would these super cute cupcake holders have saved me? And they are so much cooler than my crappy hand-cut squares taped to a toothpick! $46 for 50 wrappers from Estilo Weddings (via Unbride).

Photo: Estilo Weddings

There are No Calories in Looking

(I have to be at work at the crack of dawn again tomorrow, so I'm posting my Tuesday posts tonight.)

I can't believe how obsessed I've become with cakes. I wish that I had that skill set, even if just as a hobby. There so many ornate, beautiful designs out there.

I think that this is our new #1 cake design. I'm a bit curious how it will look with delicious buttercream frosting instead of fondant.


Dots seem to be everywhere. I found these in a few minutes of browsing around on brides.com:





If I were still doing gray and yellow, I think that this would be the cake fo shizzle:

All photos from Brides.com.

Cake Update

Bad news. The cake’s too expensive. Way out of our buttercream ballpark. Like $11.95/slice out of our ballpark. So, back to the drawing board. But there’s hope. I received a tip on much less laborious cake, shown below, that could be considered to be “inspired” by our original cake. But Andy said that some of the tips look like, um, teets, so we’d have to make them rounder so as to not tease any single male guests.

Cake photo credits pending.

I’m playing with a few ideas. Like maybe alternating tiers of balls. Or having one tier of balls. I know that I should stop referring to them as “balls.” But “beads” doesn’t cut it for me. I absolutely love this cake that the client of my virtual wedding planner, Mimi Palmer, had at her wedding (which, incidentally, is the most FABULOUS wedding that I have ever seen outside of MS Weddings!):

Photo from Leigh Miller Photography via enjoy

I could probably affordably to do something similar with an explosion of balls. It could look like our monogram is exploding into confetti to celebrate our union! Only prettier. And more delicious.

One thing that hinders design options a bit is that we are pro-buttercream. Although fondant’s pretty, we’re chubby. We like substance and sweet, sugary, buttery goodness.

Dots Amore.

The morning after I designed the original yellow dot monogram, Andy and I walked down to Treasure Island to pick up some snacks for the Bears game. I picked up a copy of In Style Weddings and was flipping through it while he ran into 7-Eleven to look for the "good" dip. I stumbled upon the photo of this cake and was jumping up and down when he came out of the store. It looks just like the monogram!

Photo: In Style Weddings Magazine, Fall 2007

I really, really, really, really hope that we can afford this cake. I have a feeling that it's going to be $$$ given how labor intensive it is. To save money, we're considering having a cake made for half count and then having about 150 cupcakes made using our moms' carrot cake and white cake recipes. Then I can prance around the reception in triumph when everyone chooses my mom's carrot cake over Andy's mom's white cake!

If we can afford the cake, what do you think we should do?

• All white?
• Majority white with some colored balls?
• All colored balls in the various colors of the invite?

When I was doing yellow, I was going to have the cake be made in many shades of yellow; but I think that that may be a bit contrived in my fall colors. (Or "technicolor" as Andy's aunt called it).

Speaking of cake, check out the pretty Vera Wang Wedgewood cake knife and server set that showed up at my office the other day:

Photo from the Wedgewood web site

I ran down to the front desk expecting Andy's birthday present to be there (four days late) and the package was for me! (Well, it was addressed to both of us, but realistically...) Our friends from Buffalo, Balz and Crash, sent it as a belated engagement present. Ironically, I had nixed the cake knife from the budget a few weeks ago. If it weren't for Balz, I would've been using a plastic freebee from Dinkel's in all of the wedding photos.