After we left Food City and had the perfect flowers in hand, we headed on to Knoxville to get the cake and cupcakes we had ordered. Let me set this up a little for you....
For those of you that have followed me for a while, you know that I didn't want and couldn't afford the traditional wedding cake. So I opted to go with cupcakes and use a cupcake tree! You can see how I decorated the cupcake tree here. (It is up for sale by the way so if you're interested in it let me know!) Even though I was going the cupcake route, I still wanted Charles and I to be able to have a cake cutting ceremony so we need a cake for just me and him. This became a much harder task than I ever though it could be! Apparently grocery store bakery's don't do square cakes!? I never expected that one. And since the top of the cupcake tree is square, it had to be a square cake. Another complication...the monogram cake topper I bought had like 4" long stakes that were meant to go do into the cake. That meant it had to be one tall square cake. And last but not least, the cake couldn't be more than 7" square in order to fit on the top of the cupcake tree!
All of that said, local grocery store bakeries couldn't help me in this area. We turned to Sam's Club and spoke to the manager of the bakery and were first told they couldn't help us either. But after my mom talked to him a little longer, he finally said they would make an exception and do it for us! A huge weight was lifted off our shoulders at this point! We made an appointment with him to go in and discuss exactly what we needed done. Seven inch square layer cake with 4 layers, solid purple icing to match the 125+ cupcakes. The manager was so nice and said he was happy to make this exception to help us out, we were so thankful!
A few days before we were supposed to get the cake, my mom called Sam's to speak with our contact Brian just to confirm everything before it was to be made. This is were we started running into problems....my mom was transferred to several different people while trying to reach him and then was finally told he no longer worked for the company. Commence FREAK OUT!!!!! I was beginning to panic. What on earth would we do!? My mom spoke with another manager who said they would go ahead and honor our order for the cake even though custom cakes aren't something they are supposed to do. She said everything would be done for the same price and done exactly as we had discussed it with Brian. Relief yet again.
So on Thursday the 29th we headed to Sam's to get the cake, rolls and fruit and other items we needed for the reception. We went straight to the bakery when we got there. The girl that "greeted" (I use that term loosely as she was a JERK and had a major attitude problem) brought out one box of the cupcakes. My heart sank, the icing wasn't put on them correctly and they looked horrible. I wish I had had my camera with me so I could have taken pictures. The icing was supposed to have been swirled all the way around the cupcake and reach a pretty little peak in the center. Instead, there was no peak and the icing didn't even go all the way around the cake of the cupcakes! We asked to speak with the second manager my mom had talked to on the phone because when we tried to tell the girl they were done wrong she gave us major attitude! I was about to loose my cool and go Bridezilla on her butt!!
While we waited for the manager to get back to the bakery, we asked to see the cake. Again, my heart sank even lower and I almost began to cry right then and there. If it hadn't been for Charles and my awesome Uncle Tom and Aunt Cindy, I would have lost it and it wouldn't have been pretty. The cake was supposed to be iced solid purple with smooth sides. The only emblishment to the cake was to be a "smooth ribbon" of icing around the base of the cake, this was to be in the same purple used everywhere else as well. What I saw however was a hideous WHITE cake with a purple ribbon around the base. COMPLETELY wrong and totally unacceptable!!!
I couldn't believe what I was seeing and further more, I couldn't believe how they could have screwed everything up so much! Brian took amazing notes and wrote down everything we wanted and even asked the lady that would actually ice them to come into the conversation as well! She told us she clearly understood what we wanted.
The manager finally arrived and asked what the problem was and we politely explained. She started giving us trouble by saying the only reason they were doing this was to honor what Brian had said and she rudely reminded us again that they shouldn't have done it to begin with! My mom did all the talking...because I'll be honest, if I had it would not have been pretty. She calmly explained that the wedding was in TWO DAYS and said we had no other options to turn to. That Brian and the other lady clearly knew what we wanted and this wasn't it. She finally agreed that they would make it right. Yay! But then discovered they didn't think they had enough purple icing left to ice the cake and re-do the cupcakes! OMG WHAT!? How can you not have enough purple icing going into an order like that??
At this point, I had to walk away. I couldn't handle it anymore. My mom and Uncle Tom said they would take care of everything and make sure they made it right. So Charles and I took off in the opposite direction and being the wonderful man he is, tried to encourage me that everything would be fine and tried anything to make me laugh!
I know this is long so I will sum it up. Everything did work out and Sam's did have enough of the purple icing to fix the cake and all of the cupcakes!! And they were all BEAUTIFUL!! I had bought some silver pearlized sugar to sprinkle on the cupcakes and for our cake, I had bought some purple edible glitter to sprinkle on it. Until we get our image CD, this is the only picture I have of our cake and cupcakes....
I know the icing looks blue, however in our pro pictures it is the correct color...purple!So there you have it, the things that nearly turned me into Bridezilla just days before the wedding! Thank the Lord that everything worked itself out and was more than ok in the end! All I can say is expect things to go wrong. And expect it to be more than one thing at a time too.
For those of you still in the planning process....make sure you have as much done before the wedding as possible! Besides setting up the day of, I didn't have any projects left before the big day. That made handling these situations a lot better!
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