I just think it's ugly.

Cake wrecks!
 

THIS IS AWESOME! I looked at back blogs for hours. Thanks KSUViolet for sharing.

I guess I should have followed up this cake drama. Our cake and baker were fantastic. We ended up with 3 tiers with a cookies and cream filling (yes, it was oreos ground up with buttercream...omnomnom). Delivered to the venue more than on time, done exactly how we asked him to. He did a super good job of replicating the above cake based on a photo. Even improvised the pearls...in the original, they were like a hard sugar pearl, but my grandfather has dentures so in our cake they were just little fondant pearls. Did I mention that it was cheaper/around the same price as the original drama bakery cake? Did I also mention how lovely this guy is? And how good his cookies are? If anyone in Pittsburgh needs a cake, send me a PM and I'll put you in contact.

Here's the final result
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y42...xAzul/cake.jpg

I love it - it's gorgeous! The story, the cake, the finished product. If you want to PM me the baker, I'll love you forever! Did you say he does the cookies, too? As in Cookie Table cookies? Wow!

Quoted for awesomeness and win.

That cake looks amazing- and a great story too!

Being fresh out of Culinary School (Pastry), and after reading through this thread, I wanted to give those who do not like fondant and have ideas in mind that a buttercream will not work....you may want to ask your Pastry Chef about using modeling chocolate...whether it be dark/milk/white chocolate or as someone stated earlier in the thread marizpan, but if you want a white cake, white modeling chocolate will work great.

For those budget conscious wedding party people: An idea of you don't want to spend too much money on a wedding cake: Have them decorate as elaborate as your budget will allow a bunch of styrofoam rounds (or whichever shape you want) in fondant, with a cutout for a real cake insert and then have them bake full sheetcakes with the flavors of your choice.

Great tips! Thanks for posting these. I used to work @ the California Culinary Academy (before they were bought out by the company that owns the Le Cordon Bleu program) and I would check out the final projects from the cake & pastry program and see the same things you described.

I went to California School of Culinary Arts, now know as Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in Los Angeles (based in Pasadena)

My wedding was at a lighthouse. For the the cake, my baker smoothed out buttercream and placed seashell candy around the cake. She painted the candy so it looked like mother-of-pearl. The result was very simple and pretty.

Since my wedding was a destination event and my hubby and I were starting our honeymoon immediately after the reception, my mother-in-law decided to temporarily take custody of the top tier of the wedding cake. She kept it in a cooler, drove it home, and then opened the box to take a peek before she re-wrapped it and put it in the freezer. Apparently, she thought the caterer had wrecked the top layer by just dropping it in a cake box and taping it up. She said it was lopsided and the frosting was everywhere. What does she decide to do? THROW OUT MY WEDDING CAKE AND REMAKE IT!!!

But before she does this, my MIL salvages some of the candy seashells to reuse. Unfortunately, she has the IQ of a rock. SHE THOUGHT THEY WERE REAL SHELLS AND TRIED TO WASH THEM IN HOT DISHWATER. She realized they weren't real as they disintegrated in the sink.

She told me all of this a week later as she sheepishly handed me a bakery box with my "homemade replacement cake" and a gawdy lighthouse snowglobe to use as my cake topper on my one year anniversary. I was too horrified to say anything.

you really don't want year old cake, when I get my business up and running, it will be in my contacts (I have a working copy now) and an anniversary cake, with the same flavors included in the price.....

We ate the top tier of our cake the day after the wedding, standing up at my parents' kitchen counter. Haha. We were like, "We could save it...but we're hungry now."

I don't know how, but my cake was delicious a year later. My mom had some kind of directions on how to store it, and she had it wrapped up in like a million alternating layers of plastic wrap and foil and stuck deep in her freezer. We thawed it out (took forever!) and it was still good! Not as good, but still really good!