Cake On The Brain

I l-o-v-e me some cake. Seriously, I've rarely met a cake I didn't want to introduce to my belly. (Except carrot cake. Why ruin a perfectly good cake with veggies? I just don't get it.) Combine my love of cake with my love of aesthetically pleasing things and anybody could guess that I flat-out-faint for wedding cakes. Oh how I would love to feature one of these works of art at our wedding.

cake by Eat Cake Be Merry via Brides.com

cake by Sweet & Saucy Shop via Half Baked

cake by Vanilla Bakeshop via Brooklyn Bride

That said, I just can't get over what I hear is the Bay Area average of $7/slice for such a masterpiece. At ~100 servings, we're looking at 700 smackaroos for one cake. Yes, it would be an awesome cake, but it's still just one cake. For a woman who loves cake, I can think of better ways to spend $700 on cake - like by purchasing more cake! I got the idea from images like this.

image via Oh Happy Day

image via Distracted Homemaker

Freaking ingenious! What better way to honor my (clearly unhealthy, but whatevs) love of cake than to serve our guests not one cake, but lots and lots of cakes - plural! Plus I could probably do it for significantly less than $700, especially if some of those cakes were baked with love by myself and others.

The dilemma, though, is how to get the *aesthetically pleasing* part back. Clearly I need some way to link the cakes to our wedding "theme" and find a way to make it a focal point. We're working on creating a cool backdrop for the buffet table, so we'll have that. But those cakes need to sit on something. In my heart of hearts I imagine using cake stands like these.

image from In Style Weddings, Spring 2008 issue

In my wallet of wallets I imagine we'll end up with something like this.

plastic plates via Nationwide Party

Never one to be deterred from a seemingly impossible task, I turned to the interwebz and found some brilliant ideas here, here, and here. BTW, you people out there generating these ideas and posting these tutorials - you rock my world!

Although I love the idea of doing all-black stands, I am a little (unnecessarily?) freaked out by the idea of spray painting something and then eating a cake off of it. I don't tend to be a person who's overly cautious about that type of stuff, but it does worry me a little and I do have some overly cautious friends. So maybe it's best not to eff around with that. But how wonderful to get inspiration for all the different items you can use for either the plate part or the pedestal part! I'm particularly digging that last tutorial, because I can just imagine this cake stand painted black instead of yellow - with that awesome pop of white at the top - it's fabulous!

image via Eat Drink Pretty

I went around to some stores crazily snapping pictures of every potential cake-standy option. (It was either that or buy a carload of stuff and then return it all later. I think I made the right decision.) Then I came home to click through the pictures and try to figure out which option would be best for us (also known as ruminating myself to death).  But eventually I did make a choice, and it's a pretty fabulous one.  I'll post about it soon, I promise!

Would you ever be crazy/smart enough to try and bake desserts for the guests at your wedding?  If so, any tips on how you plan to do it and keep your sanity?