More things to think about when you're having a holiday wedding - The Cheese Factor

We dealt with the logistics of a holiday wedding in my last post. Now let's talk about aesthetics.



So you're getting married on Valentines day. You've got your venue, your caterer, your wedding planner--everything.

Holiday weddings can be fun, but they can also be cheesy, even tacky and obnoxious, if you go too overboard with the theme. This can be a fine line. There's a reason you chose the holiday, and after all, there's no point in paying the extra money to get married on Valentines Day or New Years Eve if your wedding looks like it could have happened on any of the other 364 days of the year.

But how much is too much? Only you can be the judge of that. For example, the first cake would be fine at a V-day wedding. In fact, it would look fine at any wedding. It would be a good choice if you wanted to acknowledge the holiday, but in an understated way. The second cake says "Valentines Day" a little louder. I'd imagine the bride who went with this cake had red table linens and rose petals, maybe even little heart-shaped boxes with favors for all the guests. (By the way, these pictures are not from my weddings. I am not a very good photographer in general, and for some reason pictures I take of food are especially heineous. The first two are from Cinda's in Raleigh, the third I found online). She would incorporate Valentines Day in the little details without beating people over the head with it.

The third cake practically screams Valentines Day. It would be great for a fun, over-the-top kitchy Valentines day for a Bride and Groom with a sense of humor. By the way, I love the new "topsy turvy" cake trend but watch out because they're hard for the inexperienced to cut.

(If you are wondering, Why pictures of cakes?, well it's because I believe the cake sets the tone of the wedding. I don't make any decorating decisions until I know what the cake will look like.)

More Cake Tips - How to decorate the cake table

Don't use your nicest table cloth for the cake table! When my parents married, my mother had the brilliant idea to use Great Grandma Ann's hand-made lace tablecloth for the cake table. Guess what happened. Needless to say, that heirloom is not in my family anymore.

Anything you put on the cake table will get cake all over it. The table still needs to look nice, since it will be in a lot of your pictures, but don't use something you're not willing to throw away to decorate it. I recommend renting a white table skirt to go around the edge of the table, and a throw-away square yard of nice fabric from Jo Ann's to cover the table top. The colored fabric top avoids that blah white-cake-on-a-white-table look, and you won't cry when you get frosting all over it.

Cake Wrecks & How To Avoid

I just found the funniest site. Cake Wrecks has oodles of real pictures of these horrible, horrible cakes--all professionally made--bad enough to ruin your wedding unless you have a really good sense of humor. And people wonder why many women turn into bridezillas?
I use a handful of good local bakers for all my weddings, so I've never had a cake turn out horribly. The only way to avoid a cake wreck is to use a good baker, period, end of story.
A couple of other things to keep in mind:
If you are having your wedding in a banquet room or a hotel, find out when your vendors are allowed to arrive. This can be from a couple hours to a couple days, and you won't know unless you ask. The Durham Sheraton Hotel Ballroom only allows an hour set-up time for you and your vendors--good luck getting those 300 chair bows tied!--while Deejay's banquet room in Raleigh lets you come in at 8 A.M. to set up. No matter where you book, if you get special permission from your site to show up early, be sure it's written on your contract.
Make sure the site has everything your baker needs. The site might have a fridge, but does it have a cake fridge? If the baker needs one (most don't, but some do) and your site doesn't have one, you're out of luck.
As with all vendors, make sure it's clear who is providing what. Don't expect your baker to show up with a cake table unless it's on your contract. Usually the cake table, table cloth, cake plates, and utensils are provided by the site (if it's an all-inclusive site) or the caterer. The caterer usually cuts the cake, too.