My poor kids are always thrilled to see packages delivered to the house. For some reason, they always think that this, at last, must be the day when some kindly stranger has finally gotten around to sending them a lifetime supply of gumballs, roller skates and fireworks.
And then we open up the box, and guess what? It’s not that day.
Generally, it’s books inside. Stupid, boring, grown-up books, or sometimes something even worse: a replacement flange for the kitchen sink faucet, or a pack of screen protectors; yay. They don’t even make bubble wrap the way they used to, for crying out loud.
A few days ago, we got a huge box in the mail. Oh boy, oh boy! We opened it up, and what was inside? Pans. Four used, dented, spotted cake pans. And I wouldn’t even let the kids put them on their heads or use them for robot parts. No, I insisted that we pack them back away until I was ready to start baking. Because I, Simcha Fisher, am making a wedding cake.
The last time I made a wedding cake, I was named Simcha Prever. In fact, baking a wedding cake (my own) was one of the last things I did while I still had that name. In fact, I used the same cake pans, almost fifteen years ago.
Besides these pans, there is very little left in the way of memorabilia from our wedding. I lost my sapphire engagement ring somewhere in our first apartment, many moves ago. My wedding dress got sold, and my veil became part of someone's Halloween costume, I think. Of the set of china we got as a gift, there is exactly one plate remaining. Someone gave us a set of blue and white dish towels, and as a newly-minted housewife, I used to fold them so precisely and make sure they alternated, blue, white, blue, white, when I stacked them up. Nowadays, it’s a race between me and the kids: I wash, dry, fold, and put away rags, and they make hideous messes so quickly, the rags are all gone before they can even decently be identified as a stack.
We have wedding pictures, of course, showing me with a waistline and my husband with hair. But we don’t take the wedding album out too often, not wanting to ruin the story that some of my kids still believe (that we had a Three Stooges-themed ceremony: “Place the ring up on her finger. . . not that one; the other finger . . . “).
Confession time: I can’t even remember what our vows were. I mean, I remember the general gist of them. Maybe I don’t remember every single little tiny syllable. But basically I remember them, yeah.
Anyway, I’m making this new cake for a new couple, a lovely couple, who seem likely to make each other happy. It’s going to be a nice wedding (because that’s what makes weddings nice: when the bride and groom look happy together) and I’m determined that this is going to be a nice cake. I even bought special equipment: a leveler, a cake lifter, an angled spatula, a special icing tip for making leaves. I ordered non-carnation flowers as decorations, I researched recipes and made a test cake and test icing, and I spent last night practicing basic rosettes with a #16 tip.
I keep trying to remember what I did when I was making my own cake all those years ago. Did I frost it in pieces, and put it together right before the wedding? Did I refrigerate it? Did the frosting melt? What recipe did I use, anyway? How many layers? I can’t remember at all. I know it didn’t look great. How could it? I had no idea what I was doing.
How delicious it is to know that it doesn’t matter. It’s like when we made our vows: we had no idea what we were doing. But we’re certainly working it out over the years. We’re taking the time to look things up, figure it out, plan ahead, learn from the experts, and most of all practice, practice, practice.
For me, opening that box with the old cake pans inside was a wonderful treat. Sorry, kids! No gumballs today. Today, we have something that Mama’s been looking forward to for a long time: peace of mind. Perspective. Security. The knowledge that — meh, maybe this cake will turn out great, and maybe it won’t. I’ll try my best, and if it doesn't turn out the way I'd hoped, there will be more cakes. These things have a way of coming around again.
It’s not the wedding that needs to come out right; it’s the marriage.
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So your wedding vows went something like ““Klaatu… barada… necktie…?”
Very nice!
Yes! I love the last line. :)
Simcha, all you need to remember is that, the last time you made a wedding cake, you didn’t have 9 kids helping. And I can only imagine what would happen if I attempted to store frosted pieces of disassembled cake in an unlocked refrigerator around here. Good luck with that.
Not that I should talk, seeing as how I hail from the Grandma Moses school of cake decorating...
I don’t remember the cake, so it must have been fantastic! I would have remembered a bad cake! :)
I made my own wedding cake too. I had no clue what I was doing, so I bought styrofoam for the bottom and middle section and then made the top section cake. OOh but since we had to do the traditional cutting of the cake, I cut out a triangular-ish piece from the middle, stuffed it with cake crumbs and then ever so stealthily pasted fondant over it. To my husbands credit he didn’t gag at all, though he does refuse to eat our saved, frozen cake top.
If every bride would remember that it’s not the perfect wedding that matters! Every wedding has it’s mishaps and are the source of laughter for years to come…..if you have a sense of humor. Your last line is the best, “It’s not the wedding the matters but the marriage.”
I’m glad I’m not the only one that can’t remember those so carefully composed vows. I just go by the traditional ones anyway.
Also, I agree - it’s the marriage, not the wedding. The huge party should be saved for those couples who make it to 25 years. I’m planning to bribe my children to elope.
Why are you in charge of this cake anyway? You had better post pictures!
I cut corners on everything except our wedding cake. To save money I did most everything myself or just eliminated it. I made the silk flower bouquets for the bridesmaids, did the invitations on my work computer and took them to Kinkos, bought the bridesmaid dresses off the clearance rack at the department store, didn’t have a bar at the reception. However, I splurged on the cake and bought it from the top bakery in the state. Looked elegant and tasted phenomenal.
We had a sheet wedding cake that was ordered from a bakery in Seattle called, “Simply Desserts.” It was only about $120 (back in 1986). I had tasted the cake at a birthday party and really liked it. One side was poppyseed with almond icing, the other side was chocolate with chocolate chips and a white chocolate frosting. Or maybe there was a layer on top, but it was not an elaborate cake. My husband has always wanted to go for quality over looks. It was delicious. It was decorated with spring flowers (real) that they took off before we ate it. We have been married 26 years. Our friends helped us do everything for this wedding and reception (except make the cake but someone did pick it up for us). One person took charge of decorating the church hall, other friends did the music, one friend decorated the church etc. So Simcha, you are being an awesome friend! I agree that the marriage is what needs to come out right, and with the support of friends and family, this bride will be off to a good start. Simcha, do the pans hold sentimental value for you?
I often think about all the time spent on preparing for the wedding day, and hope that couples are spending that much time preparing for the actual marriage . . .
Today my husband and I celebrate out 26th anniversary. One of my favorite wedding memories involves my beautiful cake - in photos it is featured next to the toilet snake that hung behind it on the wall of the garage where my reception was held.
Thanks for writing this just for us. :)
I made my wedding dress, but I did not make the cake. I should have - it looked beautiful (although I wouldn’t have put plastic cherubs on top) and tasted awful. I would have at least made it tasty. Everyone likes brownies, right? I don’t remember saying my vows at all. I guess that’s what the witnesses are for.
The only wedding gifts I have left after 25 years are ONE gold-rimmed wine glass (kept way back in the cabinet) and three crystal wine decanters, which we rarely use since we are not that classy. Although our friends must have thought we were (we have some pretty strange friends - one of them gave us a marble rolling pin because he thought it would be hilarious for me to threaten my husband with it).
BTW, I went to a wedding recently where the couple and their families could have afforded a very elaborate expensive cake from a professional baker for their large wedding, no problem. Instead they decided to go simple - a two layered delicious cake, made by the groom’s aunt as the centerpiece and a lot of simple cupcakes surrounding it. All the groom’s many little cousins loved it. And it was easy to serve.
Good luck with your cake! I took a cake decorating class years back but have only attempted birthday cakes so far.The “basketweave” effect looks very impressive but is easy to do with the right icing tube & tip.
Gosh, it hadn’t even occurred to me to feel guilty that I remember nothing about the vows. I just took it for granted that we were actually allowed to go through with it, as I was technically still a teenager and wasn’t even legal to drink at the toast. We were so happy that our faces hurt from smiling. When I think about it, it was all so amazingly inexpensive. We got married a few days after Christmas so our huge turn of the century church was already decked out. I wore my mother’s simple classic dress and veil, my grandmother’s double strand of Mikimoto pearls,and our reception was at a beautiful old Spanish landmark that my father sat on the board of. We got a bunch of Christmas trees for half off and lit them up with white lights. My father-in-law paid for the Costa Rican band, and I personally decked out all the tables with pine, holly, pine cones and candles. Another family member paid for a junior suite at the Santa Barbara Biltmore. I didn’t notice that there was no hard alcohol, and someone bribed the band to play later into the night. My only real complaint is that my sister kind of stole the show dancing a very risque tango with “Tio” the best man’s gay, Uruguayan, uncle. I assured her I would do strip tease on a table for her wedding.
After almost three decades it seems like that was another lifetime. I would have been overjoyed if someone had told me it would be possible that I would love my husband even more today, but I might have fainted if they had told me about everything in between. If God had whispered “eight kids” into my ear, I might have hit the road running. Good thing he didn’t. I’m glad God shows us brilliance by slow degrees.
This was fun to read today, nine days before my own wedding. I was especially comforted by your line about what makes weddings nice—we will certainly be and look happy next Saturday, so my mom and I can stop getting anxious over meaningless details. Thanks!
Love this! I made my sister’s wedding cake three years ago, and I ended up gaining ten pounds because of all the practice cakes. I worked for a while, part time, after that as a cake decorator and the key is to keep everything cold! Refrigerate the cake before you start, and if the icing starts to get gloopy, throw it in the fridge for a few minutes. It requires a lot of patience, but makes everything much easier and keeps things looking cleaner. To really smooth out the top layer of icing, though, put the whole thing in the fridge for about 20 minutes, then smooth it with a spatula that’s been in a glass of hot, hot water.
It’s not the wedding or the marriage. It’s the live polka band and dancing during the reception!
Your priorities are all wrong.
“(because that’s what makes weddings nice: when the bride and groom look happy together)”—yep.
Reminds me of my Confirmation.
if you’re making tiers, don’t forget that you need supports (wooden dowels work fine) between layers. Otherwise, it might collapse and then you’d have tears instead of tiers.
As I’m celebrating 26 years of marriage to My Wife Cathy, I really appreciate your article.
Being a wedding calligrapher on the side, working with brides and brides’ mothers, I could not agree more with your last statement.
Anyway, Happy Anniversary!
And I am praying daily for you and your family.
We were keenly aware that our wedding wasn’t important to us. The entire reception was really for our family and our jobs. Here in the Northeast, weddings are a big social event. My husband and I worked at the same office and while it would’ve been completely fine for our careers to elope, if we were having a Church wedding six months from the announcement of our engagement, the expectation was a reception befitting our careers to which many of our co-workers would be invited. Having well over six figures of student loan and credit card debt, our goal that day was not to embarass ourselves without getting too much further into the hole. I’m happy to say we acheived our goal. When we went to pay the final payment to the caterer with a Visa card at the end of the reception, she told us she’d rather have a check. We said we didn’t have the money and she told us that was no problem, they’d wait a week to cash it until our wedding checks cleared. We wrote the check, and they kindly waited a week. Ever since, we’ve taken extra care to send our check to a couple at least a week in advance of their wedding.
One of my favorite rings is one my father made me. It has that rough look of ancient jewelry. My daughter swipes it all the time and shuns the more perfect ones in her jewelry box, saying things like “Ew, that mounting is so 80’s”, or “Too much bling”. I’m having the same thoughts about that big old cake that I once picked out from a catalog of photos. The thought of a wedding cake made by someone who loves the other has so much more meaning. I hope this is part of a new trend, as I have heard of this before. I hope it really catches on. The commercialization of weddings really is such a shame. It seems to me that garden/beach/meadow/forest/farm/ranch receptions, unstructured flowers, bouquets and friends who can make music, food and cake, would be a great new approach to impersonal venues that also cost a small fortune.
Love the ending, too!
In fact, the “tag line” for Engaged Encounter (a spin off of Marriage Encounter that also counts as Pre-Cana) is….
A WEDDING IS A DAY, A MARRIAGE IS A LIFETIME!
And I second the idea of getting married around Christmas when the church looks great anyway. We picked the Saturday between Christmas and New Year’s mainly because we were both Army officers, and it was the only time that nobody’s unit was on training manuevers…..but it wound up being perfect!! In addition, it means we celebrate our anniversary when it is quiet, and stay HOME away from the crowds and drunk drivers on New Year’s Eve!
I bought my dress for $20 from a thrift store. My brother DJ’d. The Orthodox Church doesn’t need any more decorations. We provided one keg of beer. The party was in a family friend’s old lodge in the woods. We skipped the cake; my mother-in-law made baklava to go with the gyros we ordered from the local Greek dude. Around fifty people came and all in all it was probably less than $500.
@annalisa - Well, 23 of the people at our wedding were nieces and nephews under the age of 12, and now, nearly two decades later, many of them have married or are getting married, so I’ve become something of a wedding afficianado. Despite all the TLC shows and the massive wedding industry, I think weddings can be much less commercialized now than they were allowed to be (by regional social norms) back in the 90’s when I got married. Back then, weddings were very fomulaic. Your only real options were DJ or band, and buffet or sit down meal. I remember our cake was devil’s food (with white frosting) and people talked about it because white cakes really just weren’t done.
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Nowadays, a couple can do a lovely wedding that reflects its personality. We’ve seen Cinnabons instead of a cake, and homemade cupcakes (my favorite) in lovely displays. There’ve been ipod music receptions with boistrous best men MCs and you’d never know the couples were saving money on a DJ. I’ve seen centerpieces at a jazz age themed wedding that instead of being flowers were a collection of old books and jewelry from yard sales. Virtually all the invitations today are handmade.
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These days, about the only thing that would make people talk about your cheapness is the lack of an open bar (sorry @MM). ;)
“It’s not the wedding that needs to come out right; it’s the marriage.”
Amen.
@Eileen, I was so young at my wedding, I knew more about candy than mixed drinks. I really had almost “no say” on my wedding. My mother did almost everything. If “youth is wasted on the young” than my next logical conclusion (which isn’t necessarily logical) is that I need to throw a kick—- party for our next big anniversary to make up for a few things :).
Here’s the recipe my mom uses for wedding cakes: http://bearcountrykitchen.blogspot.com/2009/04/emily-and-brians-wedding-cake.html. It comes out wonderfully every time!
Also, now I really want to send this to your children: http://www.amazon.com/Pounds-Dubble-Bubble-Assorted-Gumballs/dp/B002A8WUR6/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&qid=1345859503&sr=8-9&keywords=gumballs
I used italian cream cake when I made our wedding cake, with a hybrid boiled/buttercream frosting and covered the whole thing with fondant and marzipan roses. It still tasted good when we thawed out the top layer a year later. I love the idea of having a very simple wedding and saving the big party for a 25th anniversary. My kids always wish they had been at our wedding (bless their hearts!).
It seems to me wedding receptions and anniversary parties celebrate two beautiful but distinct things. The wedding celebrates a couple’s hopes and dreams and all the potential for creating God’s Kingdom here on earth. But an anniversary celebration honors the life the couple has built together but is also tinged with sadness for all the grief a couple’s endured since their wedding day. In our case, mixed in with all the laughter and love would be the loss of our child, the sudden deaths of two of our parents, cancer treatment, very sick hospitalized children, and on and on with the usual difficulties married people encounter. There’s none of that in the wedding celebration, or at least there wasn’t at ours. I suppose in many ways the history of a shared life makes an anniversary celebration even more beautiful than a wedding. But I just think they’re too different to compare, even if they’re often structured similarly.
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