I'm FEATURED on Cake Wrecks!

Is this a good thing? Why, yes. My wedding cake was hideous and we all know it, and Cake Wrecks is bloggy awesomeness that often makes me cry with laughter. Just not usually at my own expense.

Still, if I can bring a little joy into your humdrum lives, it means my cake wreck aint been in vain for nothin'.

Go see it here.

Down the Yellow Brick Road Part XII: Cake and Family

"Kiss Me, new wife!"
"Yes, but you're pulling my veil out with the roots of my hair..."
(This happened a lot. A long veil is not a good thing when a lot of people want to hug you.)

Mr Ruby Slippers and I decided we wanted to serve the cake in the garden after the ceremony, instead of at the reception. Why? Well, firstly, it gives everyone a nice snack if they're peckish after the ceremony. Secondly, the photos turn out prettier if they're outside in a leafy garden instead of inside a dark hall. Thirdly, no one eats the cake if it's served with dessert, because there's enough dessert there without cake too!

I might have mentioned before that the cake toppers were actually our first wedding purchase (aside from booking the venue). I couldn't be more pleased with how awesome they were! Everyone loved them!


They even made our ugly cake look good...um...okayish.

Quick kiss before we cut the cake. We kissed a LOT that day. Which is as it should be!


Apparently this cake-cutting thing was quite hysterical. I have no idea why! But I found a lot of things really fun on that day that I wouldn't normally...


Om nom nom...Bridezilla eat Groom's face!


I will say that the cake didn't taste as bad as it looked. We decided on two layers: on top, a vanilla layer with lemon curd filling, and a standard chocolate for the bottom. I specifically wanted the light-coloured layer to be the one I had to eat, in case any bits got stuck in my teeth! Haha.


I don't know what Mr RS was whispering to me, but clearly he was being a very naughty boy:

A naughty boy that I wanted to kiss again, though:


Time to show off some more Ruby Slippers!


Bring on the family photos! First Mr Slippers and I posed with his parents:

Then we added his sister:

Then we posed with my parents:


And added MY sister:


Are we seeing a pattern here? Now, put it all together, AND:

(I totally just started singing: "When you know the notes to sing, you can sing most anything!" Damn Julie Andrews).

Mr Ruby Slippers and I do not have big families. Between us we should have eight grandparents, but every one of them died more than ten years ago. MIL Ruby Slippers is an only child, and my Mom's only brother died in 1987. FIL Ruby Slippers has one sister who died a few years ago, and the other one decided twelve days before the wedding that she would rather go on holiday than come to the wedding she had RSVP'd to. I was pretty damn angry. Finally, my Dad came through and produced the only parental-sibling at the wedding - my Aunt Ethel and her husband (who, by the way, nearly didn't make it back from Italy, where they were organising my uncle's pension, in time). Her two children (sounds odd, since they're in their thirties, but they ARE) couldn't make it because the one didn't want to travel from the UK with her small baby, and the other one is an important doctor type who had conferences and other things booked in Europe, dahling. So despite the meagre family showing, I decided to take a photo with everyone related to me. This is it:

From left to right: My Uncle Robert and Aunt Ethel (my Dad's sister), my great-aunt Maureen, who was married to my Gran's brother, and is the only living representative of my grandparents' generation (probably because she was much younger than my great-uncle), My Mom's cousin Pam (whom you saw in earlier pics), my mom, Mr & Mrs Ruby Slippers, my Dad (such a kidder), my sister and her husband.

Mr Ruby Slippers had a photo with all his work colleagues. Computer nerds never looked so good:

I organised a picture with my two oldest friends, Monica and Priya. I realise that the fact that we met in our first year of high school (that's 8th grade to my US readers...our high school has five years, whereas as far as I can gather yours has four) isn't as exciting as being friends since we were three years old, like some people's wedding recaps seem to contain, but still, it was great to have them there.


When I think about how geeky the three of us used to be, I'm surprised we all turned out looking so good! If I had ever scanned in any of those pics, I might feel like sharing them. But luckily I haven't. Let's just say thick glasses (Priya and me) and weird short hairdos (Priya and Monica) were the order of the day.

Finally, since we had discovered some time earlier (thanks, Facebook!) that my friend Henni (whose sister was the florist) was old friends with my landlady and makeup friendor, Mel, we had a picture with them:

From left to right: Henni, The Ruby Slippers', Stan (Henni's business partner - they own a dvd rental shop), Mel and her partner (and our landlord) Graeme. I swear Henni is not a giant - we must have been standing on a slope!

And that's it for the group pics! I really wish we'd gotten a huge picture of everyone there, but in the hurly-burly of the wedding excitement, I forgot all about it. Oh well...

Previously:

Part I: The Night Before
Part II: Salon, Supermarket & Judy Garland
Part III: Setting Up
Part IV: Prettifying
Part V: All Bridalled Up
Part VI: For the Boys
Part VII: Going to the Chapel and We're...
Part VIII: Meanwhile, Back at the Chapel...
Part IX: Down the Aisle
Part X: Readings, Vows & Tasty Treats
Part XI: Man and Wife

Let them eat...

CAKE. We have fiiiinally ordered ours.

It was beginning to drive me to distraction; all the other "big" things were organised so many moons ago: The venue was booked at the beginning of January, the dress was ordered at the beginning of March, the photographer locked in by mid-April, the DJ done in January as well, even the honeymoon was booked and paid for weeks ago. But the darn cake...it kept eluding me. Probably because 95% of the quotes I got were, um, INSANE.

I refuse to pay R2700.00 (the highest quote we got) for a cake. Heck, I refuse to pay half that! It's a CAKE, people. With two tiers. It doesn't have to cost over a thousand frikkin Rand.

Maybe it's just the cake we chose that's expensive. But we really like the look of it! Way back at the beginning of the year, when I spent all my time on wedding blogs looking for inspiration (hmmmm, wait, I still do that) I saved about fifty cake pics that I liked, showed them to Mr Ruby Slippers, and had him choose the one he liked best. Luckily, it turned out to be one of the ones I liked best, too!

Yummy Yummerson. Except, apparently, for the price. I think I've been to or emailed every cakeshop in the city. (Ok, well, nine or ten of them, all right? That was enough!) Apparently chocolate dripping is incredibly expensive, or something. Or it could just be that it's for a WEDDING, which automatically drives up the price by 400%.

Anyway, to cut a long story short (I feel a bit rambling and distracted tonight) my clever mother found a bakery that charged a smidgeon less than our other quotes, and she said the guy there seemed very helpful and efficient, so I told her to go ahead and order the damn thing. I don't care about it anymore, I just want a CAKE and I don't even care what it looks like. Unless, you know, it looks like this, or something:

Courtesy of Cakewrecks.

*Shudder* Funny, but not to the bride...

However, the best part of our cake is the cake topper! We bought this waaaay back in January. I thought I was being so clever and original, until I saw a few other cakes around with the same thing....still, I doubt our guests will have seen this before:


How Frikkin CUTE are they? I just can't get over it! They look so gosh darn perturbed! Awww.

They're our one nod to the fact that we're getting married on Halloween. We don't really celebrate Halloween here in SA, but Corpse Bride figurines are too adorable to pass up. And I know it's from The Nightmare before Christmas, but I keep walking around going "This is Halloween, Halloween, Halloween..." every time I see this adorable pair.

Here are some other cakes that used Corpse Brides as toppers:



Question: Why is it that I don't like this cake, but it looks almost identical to the one I ordered? Spiderwebs aside, of course. Um. I really hope ours doesn't look like this, but I can't figure out what's wrong with it!

And the Groom with the Not-Corpse Bride:
We have decided to serve the cake in the garden directly after the ceremony. That way, the guests get a snack before they have to wait ages for dinner, they can mingle and chat while we go have photos taken, and they actually get to EAT the cake, which they most likely wouldn't if it was served as part of the dessert buffet.

Oh, and it makes for pretty photos. Did I mention I like photos? :-)