Romantic Wedding Dress Cake

So first of all, I am alive and well! :)  Sorry you haven't heard from me in a while.

Yesterday, I entered the Florida I.C.E.D. cake competition.  This was particularly tricky because I spent the whole week prior out in Colorado skiing with my dad (I know, poor me) but that meant I had to finish as much as I could before I left!  And do my homework and pack, etc. etc. etc...

I came back on Friday night and left for Florida early Saturday afternoon.  Fortunately, this cake is not real (i.e. the tiers are all dummies) which made transportation and lifting much easier.

For this competition, you had to select a picture of a wedding dress to use as inspiration and display it next to your cake-- here was my dress:

I liked this dress for a variety of reasons: 1) It's not white  2) I liked the fabric effects 3) The strings on the bodice/ shoulders lend themselves well to string work.

Speaking of string work...

My middle tier featured string and extension work suspended by pearls.  To do these sections, I had to flip the cake upside down, pipe the strings and extensions, then turn the cake right side up once the sections had set.

I was really excited about my floral spacer (all the flowers are gum paste, of course).  The judges seemed to really like my roses, so that makes me happy.  I really liked the colors.  The teal stephanotis may not be botanically correct, but that's part of the joy of gum paste, right??

My bottom tier featured fabric effects which I airbrushed with a pearl sheen.  I also set medallions between the tiers and then piped the suspended drop strings.  The board is isomalt (poured sugar) over aluminum foil.

There were more pictures taken at the show, but I don't have them yet.  When I get them, I will share them!

For the record, I was 2nd runner up in the professional division.  There were lots of awesome cakes!!

I also entered a couple of gum paste stilettos-- I will blog about those tomorrow, but I'll post pictures on my facebook page tonight if you can't wait! :)