acaketoremember.com Blog

Using your wedding dress as the basis for the wedding cake design is something that a lot of brides want to do, but there are some things to keep in mind if you decide to go that route.

First, you need to be clear on what parts of the dress are going to go on the cake. I’ve seen a  lot of cakes that have sections from the dress on it that are kind of thrown together. The corset laces plus the skirt plus buttons on a cake might sound good in theory, but when you put them all together they might just look like a mess. Make sure that the baker sketches it out for you so that you can see what the cake will look like.

If you’re using a specific design element from the dress, go a google search for that element to see what comes up. There are very few brand-new ideas around, so seeing what else has been done can give you an idea about whether you really like the way the designs look. For example, look up “button cake” or “ruffle cake” to see ideas about how to put your design together. You might find out that you hate the way ruffles look on a cake once you see some.

If you’re using the pattern from a dress, like lace or beading, you need to be realistic about what can be reproduced. A beaded dress, or something that has a ton of seed pearls on it, will be very labor-intensive to reproduce. Crystals are more difficult, since sugar crystals tend to not be as shiny as real crystals, so they’re hard to use on icing to the same effect that they’d have on a dress. A sparkly beaded dress might not reproduce anywhere near as shiny as the dress is.

Lace can be piped onto a cake, but you need to make sure that the pattern can be reproduced well. To do that, you should try to get an actual swatch of the fabric to give to your baker. If that isn’t possible, you should take as many close-up photographs that show clear detail as you can to send along. A link to a webpage with the dress design is slightly helpful, but those pictures are never clear enough to give a good view of the details of the lace. Neither are grainy photos taken with a jiggly cellphone camera!
Finally, the amount of detail on the dress will guide the decorator when we do your cake. If you give us a photo of a dress that only has buttons down the back as the detail, you’re going to get kind of a minimalist cake! If you have a relatively plain dress you might want to use something from it, and add something else to it to enhance that element. It doesn’t have to match the dress exactly, but it can be inspired by it.

For the complete Cake Blog go to www.acaketorememberva.blogspot.com

When you hire a baker to do your wedding cake, you probably expect that the person who you spoke to would be the one who will actually be making your cake, right?

That isn’t always how it works. In larger bakeries it’s not uncommon for staff to change a lot. It isn’t guaranteed that the person who knows how to do a certain technique will still be there by the time your wedding comes around.

I know of one bakery where one of my friends lives that recently had all of their decorators quit en masse. Not a good thing if your cake was on their schedule for the day after they all walked out. It’s difficult to decorate cakes when you don’t have any decorators on staff.

There was also a situation that arose a while ago when one bakery owner left town for vacation and had the staff do the decorating. The cakes that were delivered that week weren’t up to par, shall we say, and the brides weren’t happy. They had expected the decorator to actually do the decorating, since he presented it that way to them when he did the initial booking.

Make sure to ask who does the decorating AND the delivery. It’s also important that the person who delivers the cake knows how to fix any damage that might occur during delivery!

For the full cake decorating blog go to www.acaketorememberva.blogspot.com

January and February are wedding show season, and this year has been ridiculous.

There are so many shows popping up this year, it feels like you can’t turn around without being hit with another one.

I don’t know what it’s like in other parts of the country, but the brides who I’ve spoken to here are sick of the hoopla and the multiple emails that they’re being bombarded with after attending one or two shows. One bride told me that when a vendor emails her and says “thanks for stopping by the booth” she immediately deletes the email since she knows she didn’t stop there. I hate spam email too, so I feel her pain.

The way that wedding shows works is that businesses buy space to display their wares…then the show promoter gives them the list of brides who register at the show. If you register, you’re going to get emails.

This can be good or bad, depending on your perspective. If you do feel that you’re receiving too many emails, the easiest thing to do is to just hit delete. You can also set up an account that’s specifically for your wedding, so that all wedding-related email goes there. That will keep your personal account clutter-free.

Not registering at all is a double-edged sword. Yes, you’ll avoid the emails, but you also might miss out on some good promotions from vendors you DO want to work with. I’d suggest that you do register, but use the wedding email account to do it.

As far as the other thing that irritates me goes, it’s that every single wedding show promotes itself as having “the best vendors in town.” Well, that isn’t quite true.

I’m currently President of the Richmond Bridal Association, which is the only group for wedding businesses in Richmond that requires a basic qualifiction of two years in business before you can apply for membership. After a business applies, we check out their online reviews through the BBB and other wedding websites, we go through personal and business references, and we interview them individually. If they don’t come up to snuff, they’re not going to gain membership.

So if you’re a member, you’re pretty well screened beforehand.

On the other hand, when someone goes to do a wedding show, the only screening they have to go through is whether they have the money to pay for a booth.

At the show that I did for RBA reacently, there were multiple businesses that I’d never heard of there. There were also a lot that have been in business for quite some time, but because I know about them, I know that the service they provide is less than excellent. I guarantee that none of those businesses are “the best vendors in town.”

I could set up a booth and a nice display and claim to be a wedding photographer. Sure, I might talk a good game at the show, but just because I’m there doesn’t mean that I’m one of “the best vendors in town.” (I guarantee that if you hired me to be your photographer you might like some of  the photos, but no, definitely not all of them!)

This isn’t to say that people at a show aren’t necessarily good at what they do. They might be excellent, but they also might be firmly mediocre. Just having a display at a show doesn’t make you “the best in town.”

So if you’re a bride who’s planning a wedding, you need to be aware that there’s more to hiring a vendor than going to a show and liking their brochure. Check their references. Make sure that the awards that they’re advertising were granted for the quality of their work, not because someone gave them reviews online.

Ask your friends who they used. Ask other vendors who they’d recommend. Use your network to find out who has a good track record. You know more about hiring wedding businesses than you think…Don’t be fooled by someone saying that they’re “the best” when they’ve only been in business for two months. Or, for that matter, 15 years.

For the full cake blog go to http://www.acaketorememberva.blogspot.com/

The topic of when to hire bakers and other professionals has come up many times in this and in my other blog, but I have to say it again…Don’t wait too long!

Especially at this time of the year, which is right after “engagement season,” people are making a lot of appointments and shopping around for the vendors who will be working at their weddings. That means that there’s been a flood of new brides into the wedding market at the same time, and they’re all competing for vendors.

In the past two weeks I’ve booked over thirty tasting appointments, and they’re still filling up. I’ve had people miss out on appointment times because they didn’t get back to me fast enough, and someone else took their time slot.

I’ve had people whose appointments I’ve had to cancel because their date was taken by brides who booked their wedding date before even having a tasting.

I’ve had two people have to reschedule their appointment times, and in the half hour after they cancelled the time slots were already filled by other people.

I’ve had to return one bride’s contract and deposit to her because she took too long to return it and someone else took her date by putting a deposit down.

And this was all in two weeks.

So make the soonest appointment that you can, and don’t wait too long to book if you find a professional who you like. Dates for both appointments and weddings go fast this time of year, and if you wait too long you could miss out on hiring the person you really want for your wedding!

For the full cake decorating blog, go to www.acaketorememberva.blogspot.com

When brides call me about getting a wedding cake, they usually ask for a price estimate. I’m glad to give a rough estimate, but there are certain things that I need to know before I can do that.

First, what’s your wedding date? I need to know if I’m available in the first place.

Next, Where is your reception going to be, and what time will it be? If I have other cakes already booked on your date, and the receptions start at the same time, I might not be able to deliver both cakes depending on the locations. Some venues have very liberal rules about when I can deliver, and some are pretty strict. So if I can’t make it to both, I can’t book your cake.

The location also determines the delivery fee if it’s out of town. That would affect the estimate.

Next, how many people will be coming? Is this the only dessert or will there be something else? And are you planning on serving or not serving the top tier? That can determine how much cake you need.

Do you have an idea about the design that you want? That can affect the price if you want a topsy-turvy or something covered completely in gumpaste flowers.

Finally, what budget do you want to stay within? If you have 500 guests and only want to spend $200, I’ll find a polite way to tell you that I can’t do it for that much. This is just a way to make sure that we’re on the same page price-wise, not an opportunity for me to jack the price up. (I use a chart that prices out every cake size combination, so I don’t randomly pull numbers out of the air.)

As long as your budget is reasonable, or even a little less than the cake would be, I’ll give you that estimate. If you want to book an appointment at that point we can do that.

Every piece of information has some part in the estimate, so that’s why I’ll be asking. Sometimes when I’m quizzing brides I can tell that they don’t know why I’m asking these questions, but they all matter!

I got an email from a wedding cake client today with a photo of a glittery cake. The surface all over it was covered with a vivid glittery sparkle, and she wanted to know if I’d ever done a cake  like that. I told her no, then explained why.

There’s a type of glitter called Disco Dust that’s been making the rounds of cake decorators. It makes cakes and decorations look like they have a rainbow sparkle to them, as if they’re covered with real glitter. That’s because Disco Dust is real glitter, albeit glitter that’s been cut smaller than regular craft glitter.

So when you see a cake that looks like it has a rainbow glittery sparkle to it, realize that if you eat the Disco Dust-covered icing, you’re eating a bunch of plastic glitter. For most people the only thing you’ll notice is that you’ll see the glitter again later in a not-so-nice way, if you get my drift. But for people who have intestinal problems like IBS, where small particles bother them, the glitter can cause health issues.

Disco Dust is labelled non-toxic, but that only means that it isn’t absorbed into your system, it passes through. It should really only be used on decorations that will NOT be eaten, like gumpaste bows and other things that will be removed from the cake before serving. It shouldn’t be sprinkled on the surface of icing if people are going to eat it.

There are edible dusts that are food-safe that decorators can use to give a shine to fondant, but they don’t have the same drama to them. I’d recommend that if you want a really sparkly cake you use Disco Dust on the applied decorations, then spray the cake with the edible powders if you still want a shine to it.

You can also use strings of rhinestones if they can be removed easily, and won’t be eaten by accident!

After hearing what gave the cake in the photo the sparkle, my client said “Gross about the plastic glitter!” and chose a different design. A very wise choice on her part.

Kara Buntin has been baking and decorating wedding cakes for 16 years. For the full decorating/business blog, go to www.acaketorememberva.blogspot.com

Wedding receptions can be expensive, obviously. It’s basically a big party that you’re throwing, and parties cost money.

Most brides do want to stay within a budget, and here’s the number one way to do it. Cut the guest list.

Yes, I know that the guest list is probably the most contentious part of the entire planning process, so if cutting and slashing the list isn’t an option, here’s the next best idea to save money. Don’t buy more than you need.

Now you might think “well of course not, that’s stupid. Why would I do that? That’s the dumbest advice I’ve ever read.” But you’d be surprised.

Let’s say that you have a family of a couple and one child. You need a 2-bedroom house. So you go looking at houses that are 5 bedrooms, then you wonder why they’re so expensive. “I only need two bedrooms, so why should I pay for more than that?” you think to yourself.

Well right, why would you pay for more? If you only need two bedrooms but you’re shopping for what you WANT, the cost isn’t going to be the same.

As far as weddings go, if you have 100 guests, you really only need 80 servings of cake. Not everyone has the cake, so that’s enough. The goal is to run out of cake, not to have an entire tier left over. If you shop for what you need and not what you want, you’ll be able to control your costs.

Some people will tell me that they’re having a dessert buffet for 100 guests, but they also want a wedding cake to go with it. Well, that cake will be extra, so you don’t need a huge one. Just get a small one for cutting, you don’t need more than that.

Some people will come to me and say that they’re having a small wedding with 20 guests, only close friends and family. Then they say that they want a bigger wedding cake because a small one would be too small visually. So when they’re done choosing the 4-tiered cake for 100 people and they get the price, they get confused as to why it’s so much more than they had expected. “But we only have 20 guests” they tell me.

Right, and you’re getting WAY more cake than you need. And that costs money.

I try not to sell people too much cake. I know how different wedding venues cut the cake, and I know that when you buy a serving of cake for each guest you’ll probably end up with a lot of cake left over. Not only do some people not have cake, some venues cut the pieces so small you tend to get a lot more “servings” out of the cake than I’m estimating.

Having said that, if you really, really, REALLY want something, then put that at the top of your priority list and budget for it. The giant cake that you’ve wanted since you were first engaged might be something that will make you so happy it will be worth the extra expense. That’s a priority that only you can decide.

So when planning your budget, be realistic about how much of ANYTHING you’ll need. If you’re careful about not overbuying you’ll be able to control your costs, and you won’t end up with extra cake for the next two weeks.

To visit the cake business and decorating blog, and for more planning articles, go to www.acaketorememberva.blogspot.com

When you bring a picture of a wedding cake that you like to your baker, they’ll either tell you that they can replicate it, or that things need to be changed. Sometimes they even say that they can’t do it, which is more unusual, but honest!

Even if your baker says that they can copy that wedding cake design, there are things to keep in mind.

First, most cakes from magazines are styrofoam, and have been photoshopped and “styled” by professional stylists. This makes the cakes look perfect for the magazine, but it doesn’t necessarily reflect the reality of what a real cake looks like.

When a “posed” cake is translated into real life, it will probably look different for a couple of reasons. Since decorating a cake is an organic process that’s done by a human being, everyone has a different style, and one person’s work will vary from another’s. It’s like asking a painter to copy another painter’s artwork. It might be similar, but it won’t be exactly the same. If you want a sleek, modern cake, but everything in the baker’s portfolio is covered with fluffy icing roses, they might not be the best fit.

Another reason that your actual wedding cake will look different from a magazine picture is that the tier sizes will probably need to be adjusted to accommodate the number of servings that you need. A lot of wedding cakes in magazines are tall and thin these days, but that isn’t very practical for most weddings of more than 100 guests. If you have 200 guests and the cake that you’re looking at and loving is two tiers and sits on a footed cake stand, the reality of what your wedding cake will turn out to be is going to be VERY different.

Another consideration is whether the person you’re hiring has the skill to do the design that you want. Make sure that their portfolios are all pictures that they actually did, not photos that they’ve taken from the internet. Showing a bride pictures of wedding cakes that other people have made isn’t an accurate representation of your skill level.

 If you’ve never seen the wedding wrecks on cakewrecks.com, they will serve as a warning for you! They show what the bride wanted and what she actually got, and some of them are so horrible they defy description.

So remember that you need to match the baker’s style with the style of the cake that you want, and assess their skill level to make sure that they can do it. Ask questions…How is this or that technique done? If the answer makes no sense to you, check with another baker to see if they’re just making things up to pacify you. I’ve heard some really weird things that other bakers have told brides, and I’m not afraid to tell the brides that the other person is “less than accurate.”

As long as you don’t expect a carbon copy of a specific cake, you’ll probably be happy. Things usually need to be adjusted, so being realistic and putting your wedding cake into the hands of an experienced decorator is the best way to go.

Brides will often give me a color that they want to match for flowers or other wedding cake decorations.  I do my best to get the color as close as possible, but it’s not always possible for a few reasons.

First, there are certain colors that fade or change color because of the type of food coloring that you need to use for them. Purple is the worst with this, and to keep purple colors from changing to blue it requires some tricks.

There are also colors that are difficult to get unless you use a ton of food coloring, which just ends up making everyone’s mouths turn color when they eat it. In those cases using fondant to make the dark colored decorations is a good option.

The other time that it’s difficult to get a good color match is if the client is so specific about the color that it’s impossible to match it perfectly. She has the color in her head and knows what it looks like, but that doesn’t mean that she can describe it perfectly in order to get the “perfect” match.

If you want a very specific color on your cake, you HAVE to give your baker a color swatch to work from. Not a link to the color online, because that’s going to look different on each computer. A hard-copy color swatch, either fabric or paper. Even then, there’s no guarantee that we’ll be able to match it exactly. We can do the best that we can, but food colorings come in limited shades, and sometimes, like with purple, they don’t behave.

I’m good at mixing colors, so if you give me a hard copy of something I can usually match it. But if you tell me that the color is “seashell mauve” I’m not going to know what that is!  So for your best chance of getting the right shade, send a swatch!

Kara Buntin owns A Cake To Remember LLC, cusotm wedding cakes in Richmond VA.

For the full wedding cake business/planning/design blog, go to www.acaketorememberva.blogspot.com

99% of the time when a bride brings me a picture from a magazine it’s a fondant-covered cake. Then another 99% of the time she’ll tell me that she wants the design but she doesn’t want fondant.

I also get brides who tell me that another baker told her that she had to have fondant for certain designs. Most of those could easily be done with buttercream, so I often get to be the one to tell the bride that the other baker is wrong.

There are things that you can do in both buttercream and fondant. There are also things that you can’t do at all in buttercream if you want them to look right. And in between are the things that you can do in both, but will look different regardless of how you do them.

You can’t look at figures modeled in fondant and make the same things out of buttercream. Yes, you can pipe figures in buttercream, but they won’t look the same as fondant.

You can make roses out of buttercream and roses out of fondant. Totally different look.

You can pipe ribbons and lace onto cakes, but they won’t look like fondant ribbons or a fondant  lace press will.

I can smooth buttercream out pretty well…I’ve had people look at cakes when I deliver them and ask if they’re fondant, and they’re surprised when I tell them it’s buttercream. But just because it’s smooth doesn’t mean it will behave the same way for decorating purposes. Each medium has its limitations.

I tell brides who really don’t want fondant that I can replicate fondant designs pretty well in buttercream, but that it isn’t guaranteed that they’ll be exact. And there are certain thing that don’t work well with buttercream. The example that comes to mind right away is the pearly surface that you see on some fondant cakes. You can spray luster dust on fondant and it will shine. Doing the same thing onto buttercream doesn’t have the same effect at all.

So just be aware that abandoning fondant can alter the look of the final design, even if the design can be done in buttercream. Just because it can be done doesn’t mean that it will look exactly the same…A close approximation, yes. Exact, probably not.

Kara Buntin owns A Cake To Remember LLC, custom wedding cakes in Richmond VA