Ben & Shelby's Wedding

This weekend, two of my good friends got married in Amelia Island, FL, and - even better - I got to do their cakes!

Here's the wedding cake from the front:

And from the side:
The bottom tier is a 14-inch Styrofoam cake dummy because they wanted to add height to the cake without adding more cake to eat. The next tier up is a 12-inch round white cake with fudge filling. The second tier is an 8-inch round yellow cake with strawberry cream and lemon curd filling. And the top tier is a 6-inch round chocolate cake with raspberry cream filling.

The cake was topped with a bunch of sugar flowers (anemones, hydrangeas, and lisianthus) and two sugar turtles. Ben proposed to Shelby during a cruise to the Galapagos Islands (Aren't you jealous? I am.), and the wedding invitations featured turtles with a swirl pattern on their backs so I recreated it on the cake. Actually, Adam painted the turtles for me!

He's a sweetheart. He hates to go to bed and leave me alone to work on cakes all night. I put him to work on the turtles as long as I could, but he was soon fast asleep on the couch with Nani snoozing on the floor beside him.

Here's another close-up of the rest of the cake:

And here's the groom's cake:

Shelby asked me to make a really tacky University of Oregon-themed Hawaiian shirt as a surprise to Ben. You know, it's actually pretty challenging to purposely make something tacky! It was a gluten-free chocolate cake (using the new Betty Crocker mix available at grocery stores) with raspberry cream filling.

So which cake tier did I eat at the wedding? Well, how can you choose just one?! I sampled a couple of them - strictly quality control, of course.

It took me 15 hours to decorate these cakes (that doesn't even include baking and icing), but it was so worth it! I always love decorating cakes, but I find a special reward in making wedding cakes - especially for friends. The bride and groom were on cloud nine...Ben was all smiles, and I've never seen Shelby that giggly!...and it just makes me happy to have contributed even a little bit to their big day!


Enough about cake though! The ceremony was outside overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. The weather was perfect, the view was amazing, and, of course, the bride was gorgeous!

I'll leave you with a random shot of me, Shelby, and Nicole at the reception:

Thank you, Ben & Shelby, for letting me be a part of your day! I love you guys!