September 28, 2009

On Being a Small Town Bride: Our Cake

Living in a small town definitely has its perks.  So the nearest Ikea or Crate and Barrel might be 200 miles away, but we are getting a Macy's, and our freeways will never look like this:

Los_angeles_traffic

Sure, I have to drive two hours to find a Korean BBQ restaurant, but we have plenty of delicious (and authentic!) taco stands just around the corner!

Anyway, it's taken me a while to embrace my town after moving from Los Angeles.  I spent so much time focusing on what would no longer be available to me that I forgot to notice how much charm small towns have!

Then, as soon as I started planning our wedding, my attitude immediately reverted.  I was so worried I wouldn't be able to find any talented vendors here in this middle of nowhere town.  Granted, we won't have many vendors because so much of our wedding will be DIY, but at the very least we would have to outsource our food, photography and cake.  The three most important things.

Great.

Actually, I've had pretty good luck so far with our photography and food, which I'll blog about soon, I promise.

The cake, however, has been a different story.

It may be a result of the multitude of cake shows on tv, but I believe the standard for wedding cakes is much higher than it used to be.  I was positive that I'd never find a bakery in my area that would live up to my sky-high standards.  I knew I wanted something clean and modern, and was terrified we'd be presented with a cake like this on our wedding day:
Ugly cake

So I started my search for a bakery with a gallery of cakes that lived up to my expectations.  After a few months of searching, I hadn't had much luck.  By way of website galleries, bridal shows, and walk-ins, I had browsed through cake photos from eight different bakeries.  None of them impressed me.  Lumpy fondant, messy scrolls and misshapen flowers abounded.

I was starting to consider cupcakes.

Then, I found Creme De La Cake in Fresno.  They make cakes like this:

Cremecake1
and this:
Cremecake2
And this:
Cremecake3
{all images from Creme de la Cake's website}

I finally have confidence that a local bakery can create a beautiful cake using a collaboration of many inspiration photos.  So I started searching!  And boy, did find some FANTASTIC cakes!

I love that this cake looks like it's wrapped in ric-rac and grosgrain ribbon.  It'd definitely fit in well with our overall look!
Cakegirls1

The flowers on this cake make me so happy!
Charmcity1

I wish this picture was larger so that I could see the detail.  I looks so pretty, though.  And it's in our colors!
Aqua white flowers

These cakes are from the first real wedding I saw after considering our wedding colors.  I think it was the little red stitches on the blue cake that sealed the deal for me!
Aquared

At this point I really have no idea what our cake is going to look like.  We're going to go for a tasting as soon as Mr. Doxie gets here in October, and I'm looking forward to seeing the designs we come up with together!

If our cake ends up looking anything like our inspiration photos I'll be happy!

Did any of you small town brides have a hard time finding vendors that exceeded your expectations?

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