Author: Melissa Harrison

Wedding Planning VII: Cake

Posted on by Melissa Harrison

In a perfect world, you should be thinking about and placing an order for your wedding cake nine to twelve months before your wedding. In the real world, I would recommend doing this at least three months prior to your wedding date. As with every other step along the path to planning a perfect wedding, you will be asked many, many questions about the big day when placing your wedding cake order – and you better have the answers if you want this step to go smoothly. What to know before you go:

  • The date of your wedding
  • Time of day of your ceremony and reception
  • The number of guests you will be inviting
  • The number of people in your wedding party
  • The locations of both your ceremony and reception
  • Your colour scheme
  • The flowers you will be using in the bouquets
  • The flowers you will be using to decorate with (centrepieces and what-not)
  • The theme of your wedding (if any)
  • What kinds of cake toppers you like
  • The type of meal you will be serving at your reception (formal sit down vs. buffet)
  • How you want to cut the cake
  • How you want to have the cake served
  • What other desserts you will be serving
  • Your budget

You can then expect to taste some different samples of popular wedding cake choices, both traditional and exotic. Next you will choose the flavours you like best, colours, decorations and style of wedding cake you want. The size of your cake and number of tiers will be determined by the number of guests you will be inviting. The baker you speak with will be able to make well informed recommendations and will be very good at helping you make decisions. If the person you meet with does not ask you an almost overwhelming amount of questions you may want to shop around a bit more, as they are only doing so to give you the best service and outcome possible.

Although my fiancé and I did meet with the baker of this beauty,

Springtime in Paris

Wedding Cake from Sweet Celebrations

we ultimately decided to go with an untraditional chocolate truffle “cake”: a hollow chocolate shell in the shape of a traditional wedding cake filled with high-quality, gourmet chocolate truffles. Possibly the best part, we get to smash it open instead of cutting it. As you can see, wedding cake options today are endless. The time for the traditional fruitcake wedding cake has come to an end; from any flavour of cake desired, to any colour of fondant icing imaginable, to cupcakes, to chocolate truffle “cakes” the time has come to have fun with your wedding cake.

Ten Years to Change

Posted on by Melissa Harrison

As humans, we are given the longest childhood of any species. We have about twenty years grow, learn and develop into mature people, strong enough to leave the nest and survive on our own. The evolutionary gift of twenty years under the wing of a parent has given us what we needed to dominate the landscape. Due to our relatively recent social evolution, however, young men and women have been granted a developmental extension of sorts; not a delayed adolescence, but something I like to call, ten years to change – an opportunity to grow psychologically after we’ve finished growing physiologically. Continue reading →

Oscar Special 2011

Posted on by Melissa Harrison

Fashion does not simply come to those who follow a trend. True sophisticated style comes only to those who possess good taste and the knowledge of what looks best on their body. This year’s Academy Awards beautifully exemplified this belief. The show-stopping stunners were not the people desperately displaying as many fads as possible, but were the brave soldiers of fashion, unafraid to stand alone, liberate a current standard or revive a classic look. Continue reading →

Registering for The Dream

Posted on by Melissa Harrison

My fiancé and I had planned on registering for our wedding gifts at two different stores from the beginning of our wedding planning venture. We love cooking and entertaining so we knew we wanted to register at a one of a kind, one hundred year old kitchen and entertaining institution located in the heart of our quaint hometown. This poses an immediate problem as several of our guests won’t be coming from our distant hometown. To solve this problem we decided we would register at a national chain store in addition to the boutique shop with only one obscure location. For many reasons, including the old, ‘this used to be better,’ we decided to not register at the small town store and register only at the national chain department store. This large well known store is The Bay, it was one of the first department stores in Canada, and therefore, just about every city has at least one. They also boast being “Canada’s biggest and best gift registry.” These facts left us feeling pretty confident that we would be able to find everything we had ever wanted or needed with this one store – we were sorely mistaken. Continue reading →