Back in June last year, I had an email out the blue from a friend & old work colleague asking if he could call me that evening to ask a favour… After eagerly waiting for the rest of the day, Darryl called me late that evening to ask if I would decorate his wedding cake! I was very surprised (as well as delighted!) as Darryl & his fiancée Sarah had only seen pictures of some of my cakes, & never seen any in the flesh! But I was so excited they had asked me, despite being a little nervous to be trusted with such a big task!! Darryl & Sarah reassured me however that they didn’t want anything too elaborate, & had a relaxed countryside theme in mind, with bunting & polka dots and other cute ideas which sounded within my capabilities. They didn’t want a bride and groom on the top of the cake, and said it was going to follow a much more relaxed theme than most traditional wedding cakes. So after a brief discussion on the phone that evening, we spoke several other times over the following months finalising the details and settling on a design they liked. I started to get a bit worried as their ideas got a bit bigger and harder, and included a bride and groom to top the cake!! But Darryl and Sarah were very good and didn’t place any pressure on me, and assured me whatever I could achieve would be great, even if it wasn’t at a professional standard. Luckily, I was able to get a little lesson in making the bride and groom, as they wanted them to resemble themselves, and this seemed a task I couldn’t handle without some help! So I had a lesson one evening in how to handle modelling paste (I hadn’t even heard of this before!), and made pages of notes of tips including how to create fingers & toes, and finished this session feeling more confident in creating the models. I aimed to make the cake toppers with hair colour to match theirs, with Darryl in a navy suit and his characteristic rosy cheeks! Sarah had requested her model be sitting down, wearing a white dress of particular material – something else I had to Google as I had never heard of broderie anglaise! She also asked for her hair to be in two plaits, and be barefoot with red toenails which I thought sounded really cute, but knew would require some skill to achieve! I allowed myself most of a whole Sunday to make Darryl, but had to wait for the cakes to be delivered the following week before I could make Sarah as I needed to make her and sit her in position on the cake to dry. Although they were by no means perfect, I was really pleased with what I achieved on my first attempt to model people 

The Bride and Groom topper

I spent the rest of my evenings after work that week making all the fondant decorations and building up the decoration on each of the four tiers of the cake. I wanted to deliver the cake to the venue on the Friday night, so took the day off work to ensure I was finished on time. Afterwards I was amazed when I calculated that I had spent about 35 hours working on it!! But this was my first big project – with a four tiered cake, and a separate gluten-free cake – with lots of small details and time-consuming elements. I think the part that felt like it took the longest was hand cutting & gluing on all the individual blades of grass! As the bottom tier was so large this took quite a while, but after adding a few little flowers to the grass, and piping along the tops of all the bunting, the bottom tier was complete and I felt I’d hit a milestone in the process!

The bottom tier of fruit cake

When doing the bunting on the second tier I embossed a few of the pieces to help make it a bit more interesting as this smaller tier didn’t have any other decoration on it, and even used some pearlescent spray on a few of them to add a pretty shimmer.  I thought the swirly floral pattern really suited the cake and added some subtle detail.

Bunting with some embossing and pearlescent spray

The third tier was just a stack of assorted buttons which I made using a mould and the various colours Darryl and Sarah had selected for the cake. However even this tested me, as it took some trial and error to get the consistency of the fondant right so that the buttons would hold their shape but still come out of the mould with ease!

Tier three with buttons

So here is how all the pieces looked in my kitchen before I took them to the venue to assemble…

The completed tiers ready to go to the venue to be stacked

And this is how it looked once assembled! 

The completed cake stacked at the venue

Although the individual cake had a sea-side theme which was different to the main tiered cake, I used the same colours to tie them in together, with beach huts standing on the top of the cake, with a bucket and spade alongside – complete with ‘sand’ inside the bucket! (All edible of course!)

The seaside themed gluten-free cake with beach huts, bucket and spade

Once all the cake was finished and stacked on the table in the venue I felt really proud of it, and it matched perfectly with the decoration in the hall which Darryl and Sarah had worked so hard on, making decorations & favours to dress the room & the tables!

The Wedding Reception Venue

Darryl and Sarah also sent me a few pictures from their professional photographer, and I wanted to finish this post with this one of the lovely couple cutting their cake at the end of a wonderful day.

Darryl and Sarah cutting their cake