We've been back almost a month from our wedding/honeymoon trip and we ate a lot of cake over the 2 weeks so thought I'd share our experiences.
We had our rehearsal dinner at Ohana on May 2nd so I surprised my about-to-be-husband with a Groom's cake
Ordering for Groom's Cake at Ohana
Based on the info from here, I called GF private dining about a month in advance. Pat wasn't in the day I called so I left a message and she called me back a couple days later. I happened to be in Target at the time but wanted to get this doesn't so sequestered myself in a corner and chatted with Pat. We went over the when, how many people etc then discussed design.
I wanted to do a one tier cake with fondant cut-outs of bunch of nerdy references: star wars logo, the triforce from zelda, a Stag (game of thrones reference). (
like this but 1 tier)Pat said the legal department gives them a lot of trouble and they couldn't do any of that. boo. I tried to explain how I wanted pretty vague references, no actual logos and asked if I could email photos, but she wasn't having it.
So we brainstormed other ideas and I said I've seen some cool chemistry themed cakes with periodic table and molecules on it. She came up with some cool ideas for bubbling beakers and such but I told her I didn't want anything childish and wanted to stay under $150 so anything 3-D was out. So we settled on periodic table squares around the cake and a large H on a square like hydrogen on top (also out last initial)(I was thinking something like
this or
this for top, but that's not how it turned out but it was cute). Pat also suggested a banner and we decided on 'We've got chemistry' cheesey but whatever.
Then for flavor, I asked for the cookies and cream mousse we had at our tasting but was told I had to pick from the non-wedding list. I picked chocolate cake with dark chocolate mousse.
For the size, Pat suggested a 10 inch for our group which was 12-14 people. I had wanted an 8 in but I guess that wouldn't be enough for decorations or they thought it was too small; we had way too much cake leftover so I wish we'd gotten the 8 in.
Actual cake experience
When we checked in to Ohana on the night of our dinner, I mentioned the cake and the hostess said she saw it on the reservation so that seemed all good but later during dinner, our waitress brought out little celebration cupcakes and I had to ask about the cake and she said no one relayed the info to her so that was annoying because everyone filled up on bread pudding and cupcake before the cake.
Anywho Here's the final product; total cost with tax etc was $144 for 10 inch cake.
The swirls were metal and H was white modeling chocolate. I was happy with it and hubby was impressed that the elements had the right periodic numbers on them.
and the brownie cupcakes they gave us for celebrating before they realized we had a cake
Wedding Cake
For our wedding cake, I originally wanted a two tier with buttercream stripes and Mickey swiss dot. But I was told that 2 tier wasn't enough for our guest count and was quoted $625 for a three tier in the style I asked for (from GF bakery). Our reception at California Grill included desserts with the menu so I didn't want that much cake. Instead we asked for a 1 tier buttercream striped cake to cut and added on sheet cake to serve.
Final cake info:
$65
made by Contemporary bakery
buttercream covered
Red velvet with white chocolate orange filling
plus quarter sheet cake red velvet with Baily's mousse for $80
(photo credit:
Nicole Ami Photography)
And the topper is from Etsy.
And here's us eating cake for breakfast. Between the 3 cakes, we had so much leftover, we lugged in around with us as we switched hotels (bell services kept it refrigerated for us) and eventually had to leave about a quarter of the groom's cake at Poly as we got sick of cake after almost a week and had to switch rooms one more night left at Riverside.
