Have I ever told you about the biggest uncool surprise of my wedding?  It wasn’t when I coughed uncontrollably in the middle of my vows to the point that someone had to bring me a cup of water.  Nope.  That wasn’t it.

It also wasn’t when we realized we forgot to tell the DJ our first dance songs and he just did the best he could.  To this day I don’t know what our first dance song was.  It was pretty, though!

It wasn’t forgetting the picture frame I wanted everyone to sign at the reception.

It wasn’t even the chocolate fountains blowing in the wind and covering my guests with chocolate.  One unfortunate guest actually to go home because there was chocolate all over his shirt and pants!

But nope, none of that.

It was the cake.

The cake?

Yes, the cake.

How bad could it be?

Bad.

Pinterest didn’t exist when I got married in 2006, but if it had, my cake inspiration board would have looked like this:

Now, I realize that in 2014 this makes our eyes hurt, but keep in mind, I was nineteen and this was 2006.  Pink, orange, and gerber daisies were all the rage for spring weddings.

We made an appointment at the local bakery to pick out a wedding cake, but when we arrived, they totally blew us off.  After 30 minutes of sitting in a corner staring at a book of lame cakes, we left and went to the only other place in town that made wedding cakes: The grocery store.

Do you think I’m kidding?  ‘Cause I’m not.  🙂  It is a small town which now has many options for wedding cakes.  But then? Very few.  Plus, my brother had a wedding the month before mine and he got a small cake from the grocery store– it was delicious!

I gave them a picture and very specific instructions.  They only worked with buttercream frosting, so I told them to please just ice it plain without any of the frilly edges.  Absolutely nothing frilly at all.  I even looked at what they wrote down to make sure it said ‘no frills.’  Unsure if I was using the correct terminology, I pointed to the edging on the other cakes there & said I didn’t want that.  Then I pointed to a cake without it and confirmed that it was what I wanted.  99% of their cakes had the frilly edging so I was very particular about that point.

I also gave them a color swatch of the pink I wanted, as well as the orange ribbon I wanted placed around the very bottom of each layer.  And that was it.  Nothing else.

Fast forward to the day before the wedding.  Everyone was running around like crazy and my mom picked up the cake.  She was shocked and called me a bit panicked.

“Susan, I think they messed up your cake.  It’s pink!”

“Mom, remember, I didn’t want a white cake.  I gave them the color swatch.  It’s okay.  I know it’s bold, but that’s what I wanted.”

“I think you should come down here and look at it.”

“I don’t have time… just trust me.  It’ll be okay.  If it’s not perfect then it’ll do.”

Ahem.

I can’t even make this up, y’all.  I suppose it’s possible to have more frilly things on the cake… I mean anything is possible.  Also, that is definitely not the color swatch that I left.  I’m fairly certain it’s illegal to make fabric in that color, and I don’t remember leaving a glowstick as the color swatch.

Are you catching that?  It’s in the shade… and it’s glowing.  The frilly doily was a nice touch, I have to say, just to really bring home the frills.  And the ribbons… I mean, who needs a ribbon at the bottom of the cake layer anyway?

I didn’t see it until I got to the reception.  Literally, I was the last one to see it because everyone else was at the reception venue while we were taking pictures.  I was pretty mortified.  I didn’t care so much about the cake, but I didn’t want people thinking that I liked that & wanted it!  Also, I hate that my parents actually paid money for that.  🙁

It didn’t stop us from shoving cake in each others faces, though!  Pink stained faces for the win!

But even with the cake disaster, our wedding day was awesome.  We were just a couple of kids who couldn’t believe that our parents actually let us get married.

One of these days I really want to do another session in my wedding dress!