Ivory Wedding Cake with Champagne Bow and Gum Paste Flowers

This past weekend I made a wedding cake (and a groom's cake, next post) for my friend Amanda, who I met taking tap dancing classes here in Atlanta.  She asked me no less than a year ago about doing her wedding cake and groom's cake, so of course I accepted!  But this was no easy feat-- this cake weighed 50+ pounds and had to travel all the way to Augusta with the accompanying groom's cake.  And let's remember I have an apartment-sized kitchen and a not-so-amazing oven.  Making enough room in the fridge... also a challenge.  Here are the 4 tiers for the bride's cake and the parking spot for the groom's cake.  Not a whole lot of room for much else...

Another part of this story that has not yet made it to my amazing blog readers is that I defended my thesis on April 30!  And passed!!!  That means I finish up my thesis revisions and as of this Friday I am DONE with my PhD.  I'll graduate officially in August.  :)  This also means that I didn't have much time to work on stuff in advance as I usually do.

But I started the flowers about a month ago.  The bride wanted pale pink and green hydrangea, and I suggested pink cymbidium orchids as focal flowers along with some little dendrobium orchids.  I had a new mini-cymbidium cutter set that I was excited about, so this was a great opportunity to try it out.

This is the un-dusted cymbidium... cute huh?  I kind of love it.

I finished the flowers over the weekend and finished assembling the topper on Monday.
Here's the dusted dendrobium orchid:

And the painted/ dusted cymidium... it really comes to life, right?

Here's the assembled topper:

I had some fun figuring out how to get the fondant pearls to stay in place on the silver wires, but I thought the end result was pretty nice.

As far as the rest of the cake, I designed it together with the bride based on some other ideas she liked, her wedding colors, her dress, and her number of servings.  I made a mold of the brooch she wore on her dress and created a replica to be featured in the center of the bow.

The cake traveled fully assembled all the way to Augusta, thanks to some help from my friends. :)  I borrowed a friend's SUV and had some heavy lifting help (+ sandwich delivery and general moral support) from my 'date'. ;)

I finished the cake with just a few more cymbidiums on the bottom corners.

The topper went perfectly with the centerpieces, and the ribbon/ brooch was a perfect match to the bride's dress.  And obviously, I was really happy that everything arrived in one piece.

Congratulations Amanda and Philip! :)