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Whether you love shopping
for shoes, eating Chinese food or talking on a cell phone, your personal
passion can be embodied in a wedding cake.
These days, couples walking down the aisle have
bid farewell to the old-fashioned three-tiered creation topped with a
plastic bride and groom and are choosing cakes that reflect their
style.
And bakers are willing to go to extremes when
creating what is viewed as the centerpiece of the reception, whether it's
a tower of doughnuts, a giant cell phone-shaped Mississippi mud cake
or a stack of edible hatboxes
"I just spoke with a bride who wanted to be able
to do a cake that disassembles so guests can take it home if they
wanted,” said Sylvia Weinstock,
a woman dubbed the "Leonardo da Vinci of wedding cakes." “Her
whole wedding is going to have a lounge motif. She wants her guests to
take cakes when they want cake."
According to Weinstock, whose past clients include Mariah
Carey and Donald
Trump,
the cake should compliment the affair. "In terms of the look, if it's
a large wedding in an ornate place, you can't give them a simple
cake."
But couples have to be prepared to pay to have their
visions come true. A Weinstock cake can cost up to $2,000 depending on how
many people it's meant to serve.
Tad Weliczko, a baker at New York City's Ron
Ben-Israel Cakes, who has created wedding cakes to resemble a
groom's tattoo, a family pet and designer products like a Gucci suitcase
and a bottle of Chanel perfume, said the only stumbling block to creating
a couple's dream cake is physics.
"Some things can't translate into a cake,” he
said. “You can't do Superman flying.”
But it's not just the shapes that have changed. The
industry once dominated by white butter cream frosting now
offers a variety of wacky flavors.
"People are getting away from vanilla,” said
Weliczko, whose creations come in novelty flavors like Clark Bar and key
lime. “We allow couples to come up with whatever they like.”
Weliczko said some of the more popular cake flavors
are rum, marble, tiramisu and cheesecake. And for couples who want to give
their guests variety, they can choose a different flavor for each layer.
That's what Irene Columbus, 21, of Long Island,
N.Y., decided to do when she tied the knot with her beloved.
"One layer was
cannoli, one was fudge and the
top layer was strawberry," she said.
All of these current creations can cost plenty,
but there's nothing that says couples have to sink their budget in
order to impress their guests. A Krispy Kreme doughnut cake ranges
from $3 to $6 a person.
But traditionalists need not fret. Many brides
who aren't ready to embrace this outlandish trend are choosing to
modernize their cake with embellishments like monograms or a topper that
reflects their sense of humor or interests.
"We've had everything from people wanting a Mr.
Potato Head cake topper to a doctor groom and nurse bride," said
Ellen Stenard, product manager for The
Bridal People, based outside Portland, Ore. "We also get requests
for bald grooms."
One of the company's best sellers is the
"Motorcycle Couple" topper, which costs $49.50 — significantly
less that what a specially designed Harley-Davidson shaped
cake would cost.
But a couple's actual wedding day can be so
hectic, some brides and grooms barely have time to nibble on their cake at
all.
When asked how she liked her
cannoli, fudge and
strawberry wedding concoction, Columbus replied, "I didn't
have a piece, but everybody tells me it was good."
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