Southern Sweethearts: Time To Stuff Our Faces!

Our first dance song faded out and our DJ announced to our guests that the Lady & Sons-catered southern buffet was now open.

Once again, I wish we had more photos of the nom-worthy food.

Mr. Lab and I had already eaten, so we took that time to move around the room and socialize with our guests.

Bottom right photo by guest.

I also used that time to grab photos with my sisters since they left the square before formals.

Wait a second...what's that buzzing sound? Is that a bee?!?

Mrs. Crabcake and Mini! (photo courtesy of Mrs. CC!)

Mrs. CC drove all the way from the other side of the state to share our wedding day with us! :D

Pretty soon, it was time to do a standard at almost every wedding: cut the cake! Our DOC made sure to move our ceremony wreath to our reception for added decor. Before the wedding, I scoured the internet for a pretty vintage oval cake stand but had no luck. But I still loved the simple cake display, even though it bugs me that the table was off-center.

The cake didn't quite live up to its Martha Stewart inspiration because I opted for butter cream frosting over fondant, but I was still pretty darn impressed with Publix's handy-work.

What I wasn't impressed with was that they messed up my order and made it a completely white cake on the inside instead of one tier of red velvet and the other vanilla with raspberry filling! ARGH!

Mr. Lab and I went into the cake cutting with a firm understanding that there would be no cake smashing. I paid way too much for my makeup to have it ruined!

Little did I know that he had just chatted with the videographer who encouraged him to do it.

And honestly, I didn't care at all! But I did go after him to even up the score!

Next was the Sanford Stadium groom's cake that was my surprise to Mr. Lab. It was soooo hard finding the right baker to create this sweet masterpiece...and even harder to keep it a secret from Mr. Lab!

The score on the jumbo tron was our wedding date. And of course, I was winning! Mr. Lab married a highly competitive person. :) Btw, the real score from that day's game was a 38-0 shutout against [admittedly cupcake opponent] Tennessee Tech.

Photos of us at Georgia games surrounded the groom's cake.

Mr. Lab loved his cake!

And the cake was a huge hit with our wedding guests. Especially the Bulldog fans!

And my semi-DIY cake topper project wasn't lost on guests either!

Guest photo.

Someone wanted a piece of that cake and cut into it before we could! But we still did a formal cutting and this time, there wasn't any smashing. Glad Mr. Lab got it out of his system because bourbon chocolate cake with a Kahlua filling would not have gone well with my wedding dress!

Will you have a special cake for your groom? And are you implementing any cake smashing policies? ;)

Previously on Southern Sweethearts:

• Southern Belles Do Tea
• A Rude Vendor Interrupts Our Rehearsal
• We Have Dinner on the Savannah River
• A Spooky Ghost Tour and My Last Fling
• Our Wedding Trailer
• Becoming a Blushing Bride
• I Slip Into My eBay Wedding Dress
• The Fellas Get “Sessay”
• He Got Boudoir, I Got Bling
• An Unplanned First Look
• Our Wedding Party…and Paparazzi
• Details Tell the Story
• Years of Waiting for This Moment (Ceremony Part: 1)
• We Tie the Knot with Faith, Hope, & Love (Ceremony Part: 2)
• My Wedding Party Poses for Mug Shots While We Take Formals
• We Shared a Private Dinner for Two During Cocktail Hour
• Our Wedding Party Lines Up for Introductions
  

Next Up: We Dance with our Moms!

*All professional photos by Lindsi Jones Photography. Some images may have been slightly altered by moi.

Piece of Cake Part 2: There's Nothing Finer in the Land

Last Sunday my future in-laws and I stopped by Publix to pick up my cake samples. Boy were we surprised at Publix's idea of a "sample" size.

It was practically an ENTIRE cake! I honestly thought I wouldn't have enough to share with my FMIL & SIL when we went to try it. I was clearly wrong. Publix even threw in an extra flavor combo (half & half aka chocolate & vanilla). It was around lunch time when we brought home our sample, so we undoubtedly gorged ourselves. Hey, it's all in the name of wedding planning, right? ;)

Um, Mr. Lab, I am going to politely ask that you refrain from clicking the "read more" link below. K, thx!

As expected, I went with the red velvet and vanilla with raspberry filling, all in buttercream frosting. We managed to quit stuffing our faces long enough to wrap up some of the cake to take back to Mr. Lab when I visit him next week. Look how nom nom nom, er...yummy, they look!

The perfectionist dwelling inside me loves how the two flavors are alternating colors. It's going to be pretty even after the cake has been sliced and diced! As for the updated price for the red velvet flavor I mentioned in Part 1, Evelyn put down the same $165 on my order form! I'm assuming she gave me the prices with the extra 20% included already. Nonetheless, it's on the contract, so that's what I'm paying!

So now that the wedding cake was all settled, I excitely moved on the the groom's cake!

Some of you may remember my scare with Mr. Lab and his desire of a meat cake. Well, he assured me that it was mostly a joke. He definitely thinks meat cake is totally awesome and wants to try it one day, but he also said that he didn't really want it for his groom's cake. Whew! I'm was so relieved he felt that way!* It meant that I could move forward with my plans for a (surprise) cake that represents the pasttime we both share a love of: Georgia football games!

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I had a vision that our cake would be a replication of our beloved Sanford Stadium with a few added personal details. It would be presented soon after the cake cutting to the Georgia fight song and placed on a table full of photos of me and Mr. Lab at Georgia games.

Just some good-hearted fun with our arch enemies! :P

On the field would sit a "cake topper" of me and Mr. Lab playing some football, kinda like this:

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I love how the bride looks like she's tackling the groom. That's what I'm talking about! And to play on the idea of us in the middle of a "game", I'd have the jumbotron personalized with our "score": LeiLani (me) winning 11 to 7 against Chris (Mr. Lab). The 11-7 score reflects our wedding date and the fact that Mr. Lab scored a touchdown and made his PAT and I would have had to score a touchdown, miss the PAT, and kicked 2 field goals OR scored a touchdown, made the PAT, and gotten two safeties OR, well, you get the point! Can you tell I'm ready for the college football season to start? And can you tell that I take competition seriously? ;)

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Anyways, the first place we went for the groom's cake was Custom Cakes by Minette Rushing. She is Savannah's premeire cake designer. She's even making the wedding cakes featured in the movie Miley Cyrus is currently filming in Savannah! But because of her talent, she comes with quite the price tag. She doesn't sell any cakes under 100 servings or $550. I decided to still have a consult with her because I was saving so much with my wedding cake. So FSIL and I booked an appointment.

When we walked in the door, the first thing I saw was this:

I thought it was pretty ironic that I was there for a cake honoring the Georgia Bulldogs and ran into a gator! But I was helplessly in awe. I couldn't believe this was a CAKE! I felt extremely confident that Minette would be able to carry out my vision flawlessly. I mean, look at some of her other work on display around the room!




But alas! After the consultation, she sent me the price for what my vision would cost: $1200 plus tax! YIKES. I have expensive visions. For that price I would have to put the cake in a glass box and display it in my living room for the next 50 years.

So I went back to the search. I happened to run across a Sanford Stadium cake online and found out that the baker doesn't live far from Savannah. Thank goodness it's the weekend so I actually have the time to give her a call. Isn't this cool?!?

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So stay with me. This cake saga isn't over yet!

*Oh, and just because Mr. Lab was a good boy (hehe) about the meat cake, I'm planning to make him one in honor of our fourth anniversary in October! :D

All un-sourced photos are my own.

Piece of Cake Part 1: Plain and Simple, Yet Oh-So Lovely...

...and cheap! But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Hive, please allow me to introduce my wedding cake:

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And you won't believe who's making it!

What for it....



PUBLIX!

Yeah, you read that right. A grocery store bakery is making my wedding cake. And it's going to be fabulous AND affordable!

Now that I'm living in Savannah, I decided to start working on some of those "must-do" items from my wedding checklist. FMIL is in town for a 6 day visit so she, FSIL, and I headed out to a couple bakers to get started. I took a few requirements with me so I wouldn't be persuaded by any smooth talkers while on our quest.

1. Must feed at least 40 of our 75 guests (the groom's cake will feed the rest and then some)
2. Must use buttercream icing
   
3. Must be oval & two-tiered
   
4. Must have impeccable piping skills
   
5. Must be NO MORE than $5 per slice (and that's pushing it!)
   

After a few tries at some absurdly expensive shops, I was beginning to feel unrealistic about my cake budget. Then I remembered to stop by Publix since I'd already been contemplating them for my simple wedding cake plans.

Can I just start this recap by saying my experience reminded me of the Publix commercial about wedding cakes and customer service? Our baker, Evelyn, was so helpful and cheerful that I immediately liked her. But when she got to the prices, I absolutely fell in love with her! More on that a little later...

First off, I showed Evelyn some of my inspiration photos I brought along to give her an idea of how I wanted to customize the main inspiration cake to make it my own.

Buttercream. I want a "homemade" and southern look to my cake, so fondant was out of the picture. Evelyn will smooth it out to the point that it almost looks like fondant but still has the feel of "icing". Besides, most fondant isn't that tasty, so why pay for something a lot of people end up peeling off and discarding?

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Monogram. I never tire of seeing a couple's initials on their wedding cake. Evelyn will incorporate ours into the scroll work on the top of the cake. That means no cake topper, just beautiful piping!

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Single flower decor. I absolutely love the elegance and simplicity of a single, large bloom on a cake. Flower of choice? Peony of course! I will either be adding a fake bloom or having our groom's cake baker make one out of gumpaste. (More on all this in Part 2.) Publix cannot make large flower blooms, so these are my only options (or importing a real peony bloom, but I'm not doing that).

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The result? Well, we won't know for sure exactly how it'll look until the week of the wedding. But I've made a handy little guide on where our changes will be to take to our tasting Sunday! I'm keeping the ribbon and "string" detail from the inspiration pic. And although I haven't tried the flavors yet, I'm pretty sure what I'll choose. :)

(editing done in Picnik)

Unfortunatley, the one area Publix lacks in cakes (at least to me) is their limited selection of flavors. Too bad they didn't have some sort of peach filling. Doesn't get much more southern than that! To compensate for the flavor selection, the groom's cake will have more exotic flavors. But you'll have to stick around for Part 2 to hear about them! Our groom's cake meeting is next week (I'm having it made somewhere else).

So now you're probably wondering about the price, right?

Well, I asked for a cake that will feed at least 40. Evelyn gave me a magical number of only $140 for 44 slices!* I was blown away! At that price I got greedy and asked how much the next size up cake would cost. She surprised me again with the number of $165 for 66 slices!* I decided that for a $25 increase, I might as well go with more slices to be covered just in case both cakes are so delicious we start to run out. Even better, we don't have to pay any deposit. We just have to pay the full price 3 days before the wedding. And if I'm not happy with the cake, they either have to work on it until I am, or I just don't have to pay. Sweet. Literally.

So if you weren't doing the math, that's only $2.50 per slice. I would gladly walk into a store and buy a slice of cake for that price. Heck, nowadays you can't even buy a dessert in a restaurant for under $5!

So stayed tuned for Part 2 to hear about this tasting and our groom's cake meeting!

*Prices before additional 20% for Red Velvet flavor. Updated prices in Part 2.