The first topic that I'm super-excited to write about is my girlfriend, Kim's wedding this past Saturday. Kim is quite possibly the sweetest person on earth; I literally do not think that she has a mean bone in her body. Although, who knows, maybe those mean bones will start growing after a couple years of married life, lol.......I'm just kidding.....maybe..... I've been looking forward to making her wedding cake for months now and am so excited to finally be able to share it with all of you.
When Kim and I first started talking about designs, she basically told me that she wanted 1) a tall cake, at least 5 tiers 2) a classic but not boring design and 3) she wanted their monogram featured on the cake. Keeping "classic but not boring" in mind, we began by taking inspiration from her invitations which featured gold flourishes and pearls and then later incorporated the shape and beading from her dress. Below is the sketch of the cake design in a shadow box which incidentally, was one of my bridal shower gifts to her; hopefully, she'll find time later to add additional wedding momentos to it.
The dress from David's Bridal that inspired the shape and piping 
So that's the design that we started out with but it's not what we ended up with. Last-minute inspiration struck as I was staring at the above picture of the dress and in the space of two seconds, the decision was made to mimic the the curves of the mermaid bottom in the bottom two tiers. Without further ado, the final design.
At 30" tall, it easily satisfied Kim's criteria of a tall cake. Here's a view of the back.
Other shots from different angles
Once I started assembling the cake, there wasn't a whole lot of downtime, so unfortunately, I didn't get a lot in-process photos. However, I did manage to grab one of the gumpaste flowers as they were drying.
TIP: If you're cheap like me and don't want to buy and store a ton of celformers, just use shaped aluminum to dry your gumpaste flowers, =D
....and a pic of the piped monogram before the edible gold paint was applied. 
The wedding was held at the Laguna Town Hall in Elk Grove and there was a lot of great decor elements at the reception but the most impressive element was definitely the hanging flower arrangements. Strung from impossibly tall ceiling beams, it was an impressive sight as you walked in.
Here's a shot of one of these hanging arrangements from my view as a seated guest.
On a side note: It's always interesting being a guest at a event where my handiwork is on display. On the one hand, it's great to see and hear everyone's reaction to the cake(s) and on the other hand, it's also excrutiating anticipating everyone's reaction to the cake(s). As much as I try to enjoy the event as a guest, I would be lying if I said that a good portion of my brain isn't trained on eavesdropping into people's conversations to hear comments (good or bad) about the cake(s). As I literally am my own worst critic, my eyes automatically zero in on all the little flaws and am continually amazed that others just don't see them. Yeah, as you may have guessed by now, I'm a bit of a perfectionist, lol.
With the abundance of good food, good company, and good wine (wine, like butter, makes everything better), it was difficult not to join in the couple's obvious happiness and have a jolly good time myself :-).
And as this post is already long, I'll leave you with a picture of me and the cake(s). Stay tuned as I blog about the groom's cake (a bottle of Opus One) next.
Lien Sanchez
and after
Now for the assembly starting with the bottom tier.
With tier 2 added. The post-it note was to mark where the front of the cake should be.
All 3 tiers - a total of 21" tall
The bow's loop and the gardenia were left off and added on at the site to prevent damage
Josephine and Jimmy's wedding cake full assembled. The uplighting on the wall adds a nice dramatic touch, dontcha think?
Some artsy-fartsy shots....
Just speaking to Josephine, I knew that her wedding would be beautiful with lots of personal touches but I was truly impressed by how amazing everything looked. First of all, both the wedding ceremony and reception was held at 
The reception was in the ballroom adjacent to the ceremony. Each table alternately featured tall and low flower centerpieces.
The low centerpieces with gold framed table numbers.
Last but not least, the escort cards on a bed of wine corks.
I'm sure there were plenty of gorgeous elements that were set up after I had left but I was glad to have seen some of the decor and to know that their wedding cake fit in just perfectly :-)
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