Wednesday
May052010
The Princess Bridal Cakes
May 5, 2010 "Mawwiage!
Mawwiage is wot bwings us togevaaah...today."
Plus everyone's favorites: the missed marks!
As always, we start with the inspiration cake:
Oooh, aaahhh.And follow with what was actually received on The Big Day:
Ewww, awwww...
"Mawwiage: that bwessed awangement...."
"That dweem..."
"Wivin...a... dweem!"
"Stand your ground, men! Stand your ground!""So tweasure your wove."
And your airbrush.Skipping to the end...
The chocolate coating makes it go down easier.But you shouldn't go swimming after for at least a good hour.
Stephanie M., Anony M., Amanda C., Ann B., & Jennifer, are there Wrecks ahead? If there are, we'll all be fed!
Note from John: Um... just so we're all on the same page, the first cake in the pair is what the customer wanted and the second is what they got. Carry on then, carry on! (mmmm Fruit Newtons)
Reader Comments (226)
The first cake isn't so bad a wreck...although it does look like it is bandaged.
The 2nd one...doesn't look like anything edible. If it wasn't on Cake Wrecks, I'd have guessed it was crowning achievement of an eight-year-old's pottery wheel class.
3rd...the roses are pretty. The ribbons are...yeah. If I got my hands on that topper, it'd would get a zombie face touchup.
4th...didn't look so bad until I zoomed in and saw the airbrush had been used after the trim was added.
5th...oh lard...meringue flowers...poo ribbons..shiny shiny sloppy icing...random silk greens...lopsided.... /facepalm
2 and 5 not only demand a refund, but a written apology.
YES!!! LOVE LOVE LOVE the use of the princess bride. LOVE!
*LOL* Ok, I have to share:
For our wedding, we had the minister start our ceremony with the opening lines from the wedding in the Princess Bride. We'd had friends threaten to do it for months, and they were all in shock when the minister did it, speech impediment and all. Totally hilarious. Funnier, I had family that hadn't seen the movie, and thought something went wrong with the minister. Double funny!
Ye gads. I hope they didn't pay for those cakes. The wedding cake business is such a racket.
Most of those cakes aren't that bad. They're not perfect replicas, sure, but they're still nice-looking cakes that were close. I'll bet the brides went to some cheap place like Walmart with fancy, hundred dollar cakes saying, "make this" not thinking about the fact that your average baker isn't at the level of the cakes they wanted.
But still, you quoted the Princess Bride so I'm distracted enough to move on.
I looked at the first pair and said, "Oh, hey, that's not that bad." Then I looked at the second pair and said, "Now THAT one, on the other hand..."
Honestly, this is a public service you are doing for all future brides, grooms, mothers thereof, and bakers wearing targets on their white jackets. You have no idea what kind of potential there is for things to go wrong at a wedding until you have gone through it, and by then it's too late.
Don't ask a beer baker for a champagne cake. Also, beware the kindly offer of a free wedding cake from a non-professional baker unless you are prepared to see it beneath a banner of Carrot Jockeys! It's worth the cost of the cake to not have to forgive someone who meant well and tried real hard. Or, who did what they could do once they figured out that what you asked for was beyond their capabilities.
wv : immene. "Did that cake melt on the way here? Immene, you did a wonderful job on that shiny cake, Bea!"
Wuv, twoow wuv..
First one: Actually not too bad. A little clumsy but it's a pretty reasonable facsimile thereof.
The rest, wow. Just...wow. The phrase "It's my party and I'll cry if I want to" comes to mind. So wrecky that they'd even make Princess Buttercup lock herself in the castle garderobe and wail.
SO glad I dodged the wrecky bullet at my wedding. The bakery DID forget the topper (our initials that I'd dressed up with crystals--not very expensive) but it looked all right anyway. Maybe they were going to put them on and thought, "No, it'll be a wreck if we put these on!" =D
The first one doesn't miss the mark by much, but the rest?
what's up with the nasty yellow flowers? And the bride on top of that one looks like the Queen of Slime, the Queen of Filth, the Queen of Putrescence. Boo Boo!
PRINCESS BRIDE!! Jen, I LOVE you!! Seriously, this post was so hilarious! I just about had turkey sandwich all over my monitor with the "stand your ground" Comment paired with the topper on that cake. too funny! All those poor brides.
wv: disors - short for the disortors all these wrecks were on a wedding day!
I would be one ticked off bride!!!
The black, white and purple one was the worst. Oh and the chocolate/orange one was pretty bad too.
No more rhyming...and I mean it!
(anybody wanna peanut?!)
I haven't commented in a while, but I just had to tell you how much I love you. I can not get enough of the commentary on every post, and this one is one of the best. Seriously, both Jen and John (hubby of Jen)... You. Are. AWESOME.
This post is making me hungry for an M.L.T. (you know... a mutton-lettuce-and-tomato sandwich where the mutton is nice and lean...)
Thanks for making my day!
- joules
Oh! I just got the chocolate coating reference! :) Not even Miracle Max could fix these Wrecks!
Good grief, those of you saying "obviously the bride was just cheap or didn't do her homework" are jerks. Bride #1 already posted that she paid nearly $1000 to get something that IS NOT what she asked for.
For my wedding, I went with THE person in the area who was highest recommended, I checked out her work beforehand, and I paid what she was asking for my cake. It came with columns I hadn't asked for--that were wobbly--and the top toppled before we even had the ceremony. Fortunately, 1) my sister in law did a great job saying it, and 2) that was the only disaster at my wedding, so I'm not complaining much. But blaming the bride because someone else screwed up or did a poor job is just mean AND stupid.
~ ~ ~
Sorry, Jen, I don't think there's a pic of the toppled cake, or I would definitely submit it.
Usually, I give thumbs up to the amateur baker who says: Of course I can do this!
Reading the comments - the only cake where I would say caution, not for every baker comes from expensive bakery. WOW!
All the others are sad cakes, because the baker was simply to lazy to give their best. Even a half blind Aunt Maud would see this and try to correct her wreck. I wouldn't expect perfect cake but even an inexperienced decorator can present decent work - it takes only some time and dedication. And buy the flowers if you cannot make them yourself, or explain the bride silk or real ones are the way to go!
To the blame-the-bride-ers:
Not everyone can afford an extravagant wedding. If your daddy paid for a $10000 one for you, nice for you. Research does not equal results as promised, some people claim results they can't or don't deliver.
I got a beautiful and delicious 3 tier cake for under $300 from Publix. Many of these wrecks cost way more than that.
Saying that anyone "deserves" crap like this on their wedding day because they aren't rich like you is exceptionally RUDE.
Also, I theorize that the people who don't get "inspiration" and "what they got" must be decowreckers in real life.
Alex
Ps. I looove these wanted/delivered wreck posts. My fave alltime is still the "plaid" Inspiration vs Perspiration.
Pps. Didn't appear to post so disregard if it did twice (didn't get my "your comment..." Response.
For the third one, I have a hunch that whoever took the design in to the decorator, took it in and said something to the effect of: I want it to look like this, BUT...
...all buttercream, fondant; no inedible parts, so no ribbon, no flowers; must make buttercream flowers.
So really, she didn't ask for the first cake at all...especially if she went in with a request to replace that flower topping with a tacky figurine of a bride yanking her groom around topper.
Decorator may not have executed 100%, but whoever ordered that is more than likely to blame, too.
I will say, that after reading this blog, when I got married a few weeks ago, I was so excited to see my cake. It searched so hard and worked on the design. I figured it it came out as beautiful as the inspiration drawing, GREAT! And if it turned out fugly, GREAT (send it in to cakewrecks).
It turned out gorgeous. :)
I don't understand why, when the inspiration cake looks like it has shiny shiny ribbon, someone thinks it's a good idea to recreate it in roughly cut fondant icing. Wouldn't a ribbon be easier?
Princess Bride!!! Best movie ever!! I actually walked down to the musical theme song. Anywho...
I would cry if on my wedding day I imagined what they showed me in the picture and got that instead. I would cry, and then I wouldn't pay :P
As for the last one though I don't really mind it. I think it's like the buttercream version of the picture which never looks as good but taste 10x better. Though that one doesn't look too shabby.
Perhaps the (wrecky) bakers were from Guilder. Or maybe they should be sent back to where they were, unemployed, in Greenland!
Clearly, these brides fell victim to one of the classic blunders. The most famous is never get involved in a land war in Asia. But only slightly less well known is this: Never go to Walmart
when CAKE is on the line.
A-ha-ha-ha! A-ha-ha-ha! A-ha-ha-ha! *THUD!*
- joules, with thanks to http://scripts.popbang.co.uk/p/princess_bride/index.php
Aw man, I'm gonna have Princess Bride quotes running through my head all day!
Seriously, inconceivable that some wreckerators don't know how to properly support a cake. It's basic common sense, no?
Ahh! Okay, they're all bad, but number 2 is just indescribable.
Wov, Twu Wov.... (just not for those cakes.. ouch!)
The sad thing is that I realy wanted my preacher to talk like that for out wedding but i didn't think he would go for it. lol! Best movie EVER!
Best post ever! The Princess Bride is my FAVORITE movie. That and Star Wars.
Although, a couple of the "wrecks" were actually not so bad. Not as good as the inspiration cake, but not so bad. Specifically, the one with the red roses (the first one) and the white/gold one with the blossoms all over it.
The black/blue/white circles thing was horrifying though.
Although I do feel bad for the brides that get 'wrecked'... it makes me wonder 1) what kinds of bakeries they're taking these photos to and 2) whether said bakery exhibits the ability to create a cake like that. Cos, with a less expensive bakery... that's about the result one should expect :D
The cakes are fairly wrecky, but the comments about how people deserve perfection on their wedding day are a hoot.
The minister Robert Fulghum has a great story about weddings that go awry. One copy is on the web http://www.wattpad.com/38382-motb-by-robert-fulghum" rel="nofollow">here, although it's wrecked by an annoying popup.
I'm going to be saying "Mawwidge! Mawwidge!" all day today, thank you.
Those cakes were amazing. I'm not sure if that's good or not.
The wrecks are deserving of the fire swamp! Thanks for the chuckles this morning.
Best blog. Best movie. My head just exploded.
The first one wasn't that bad, but the second one....
I really only see problems with the second and the fourth. The ugly one with the blue, and the chocolate one. The gold on the third might be a little dark. And the one other cake was not too bad really, except for the topper. Number one, I don't see anything wrong with.
Boooooooooo! Boooooooooo! Boooooooooo! Boooooooooo!
You know what I noticed? Most of the "inspiration" cakes are in fondant, and the wreck was tried to be recreated in buttercream. Now, as any good decorator knows, you can't do NEARLY as much in buttercream, and even for the things you CAN replicate, you have to be extremely skilled.
I was there. An old man said man and wife.
The Princess Bride FTW!!!
The first one with the draping really isn't that bad considering. Making a fondant drape look good is surprisingly tricky, especially on a large scale like that, so unless you're willing to pay big bucks for an excellent decorator it's not going to happen.
"They were both poisoned. I've spent the last 2 years building up an immunity to Wreckiness." ;-b
Also, as someone who loves to imitate the priest in the marriage (sorry, "mawiage") scene, that is some of the BEST phonetic spelling I've ever seen!
WV- pensor: (said in heavy Chinese accent) "The customer wrote very specific instructions for the cake, but they wrote it in pensor, not pen, so it got smudged. I just airbrushed the crap out of it.
Feed the cakes to the R.O.U.Ss! The bakers too, while you're at it.
To be fair, the first wreck could have been sooooo much worse than that. Yeah, it wasn't a prefect remake but I would have been happier getting that one over any of the rest of those monstrosities.
What a public service! I had ~NO~ idea that this could happen!!!
For our wedding we went to the cake place, looked through thousands of pictures, picked one, paid $300 (which also included a couple of hundred very lovely invitations) and on our wedding day the cake, looking identical to the photograph, arrived.
I never knew how thankful I should be!!!! And to Stephanie M. (cake #1) you have my condolences. May your marriage be as beautiful as your cake was disappointing!
Wow.
Dear Jen and John,
I just spent the last week (or three) reading your entire blog, from start to today. Thanks for all the laughs. This blog is fantastic and I shall continue to follow you daily!
luv,
Jen
That first one might not resemble the original too much but it doesn't look too bad :)
But the others... I hope the marriages won't be
as disastrous as the cakes.
-Nina
The first cake isn't so bad, it at least made a very good attempt at the original design.
The second cake though, that's just horrible, they didn't even bother getting the bottom "bands" straight on the cake.
I don't care if these cakes aren't as wrecktastically awful as some of the other inspiration vs. perspiration wedding cakes, the Princess Bride commentary is wonderfully awesome. To log on to find this a day after a Star Wars quotation competition with friends on Facebook is making this one fantastic week.
Cake #2: I think a "decorator" would really have to work very hard to make that one as ugly and hopeless as it appeared. Also, did you notice that the top tier is sitting on a very obvious foil-covered board of its own?
Cake #4 ( the gold cake): Part of the beauty of the inspiration cake was the fact that it was so "dream-like": white cake, white flowers drifting down from the top, posed on a white fragile-looking pedestal which is sporting a pretty bow. The cake plate has a gold ring around its surface, which is what probably inspired its creator to add "just a touch" of gold.
The disaster cake however, looks heavy and anything but dream-like. The big tarnished silver base on which it is sitting adds to the ugliness of this particular cake and helps make it look HEAVY. Silver does not match anything on that cake whether the silver is tarnished or brand new gorgeous.
I would seriously like to know the reactions of the brides to these cakes (especially #2) upon seeing them.
KT