The Tale of the Top Tier

I promise that this will be the very last “Our First Wedding Anniversary” post. I realize that I’ve now given you a full play by play of ever waking second of us celebrating, but hey, it only happens once so I figure I need to document it, right?!
Maybe you don’t agree, but I’m going to continue with this post anyway. :)

So as I mentioned in my last post, in an effort to stretch out our Anniversary celebrations as long as possible, I thought we should save the eating of our top tier of our wedding cake for Sunday evening. **It’s funny, when I mentioned that we would be eating the top tier of our wedding cake for our anniversary, one of my co-workers was completely confused by the tradition. She had no idea that so many couples save the top layer of their cake for their one year celebration. I just figured everyone participated in this fun activity, but I guess maybe it’s not as popular as I thought?! Did any of you not know about this cake tradition?!**

Well if you remember, our wedding ceremony/reception actually took place in North Carolina which meant that the top tier of our wedding cake has actually been hanging out in my parent’s freezer for the last year. Luckily my mom was smart and triple wrapped that puppy to make sure that it was still fresh on our anniversary. The only thing….I no longer live in DC where I could drive home to pick it up and transport it back in the comfort and safety of my car…instead, I needed to come up with a plan for getting it to New York City without completely ruining it AND without having to ship it in a freezer box costing us oodles of money.

So since I was home a couple of weekends ago “working on” my anniversary surprise for M. it was the perfect opportunity for me to pick up the cake. At first my mom and I discussed having me just carry the cake on the plane with me, BUT planes can get pretty hot in the summertime and we both highly doubted that security was going to let me carry on a box with a cake tier wrapped in ice packs (liquids!!!). Then we figured I could just pay the $25 to check a box since I had a bunch of summer shoes still at home that I wanted with me in New York for the summer. I had also done a little shopping that weekend and needed a place to store the home accessories I had purchased that had no chance of fitting in my rolling bag so it worked out perfectly!

My mom had saved one of those foam cooler chests so we packed that baby up in the cooler chest with ice packs all around. Once we carved a nook out of many pairs of shoes we were set to go. We left for the airport with the cake securely in a cooler bag and the nook in my “check” box waiting to be filled.

Once at the airport it was time to un-cooler-fy the cake. Having a good mom who understands the blogging process, she suggested photographing me packing our precious cake up in the box so that I’d remember the journey of our wedding cake. After finally getting that thing out of the cooler chest (which, now looking at the photos, looks a bit sketchy in the parking lot of an airport, if you know what I mean!) I nestled it in it’s home for the next few hours in my box full of shoes. I opted to keep the cooler packs strapped tightly to the sides of the cake just in case we were delayed and sat in the heat for a couple of hours. A HomeGoods bag from some of my loot from the weekends shopping trips safely encased the cake box.

An hour and fifteen minute plane ride later I was lugging that box into a cab to get it safely back to our apartment in the city. ** I think that’s the only “bummer” thing about traveling alone home to New York City. No one to meet you at the airport! It’s far too expensive to get out to the airport and back home for one person…let alone having someone meet you there!** Before I knew it our pretty tier of cake was resting safe and sound in our New York City freezer. Certainly a long trip for some delicious cake! :)

So let me tell you our cake story.

It was this past Sunday night and while M. was finishing preparing some food for the week, I got the cake out and ready to go (we had placed it in the fridge the morning before and then on the counter top that afternoon so that it would be the perfect temperature). I initially pulled out on of my cake stands, but then realized that this hunk of cake was a little heavier than I expected!

Once M. and I were all settled we sat down at the table to have some cake! Of course I wanted to take photos of the whole thing, but as you can see from some of the photos M. wasn’t too fond of picture taking that evening. M. jokingly put his lips to the side of the cake to have a little frosting and then he took my camera from me (which I was surprised by), so when I put my head down to do the same thing…well….M. got me.

My face was quickly smushed into the cake and I was completely caught off guard! He proclaimed…”I was nice at the wedding, so I felt it only appropriate I get you this time!” He took the camera so that he could catch some images of the entire thing. I wasn’t angry at all – it was totally hilarious. Then it was my turn….I smushed his face a little harder though and M. ended up with a little cake in the nose…sorry sweetie!

It’s true – at the wedding we were definitely “nice” to each other with the cake cutting portion of the evening. I know that it depends on the couple, but I couldn’t see us having cake smashed in our faces when we were both dressed so nicely…a beautiful wedding gown and a cake covered face? Not really my style. I did absolutely love our cake design, even though I didn’t actually finalize my cake design choice until the very last week! It turned out even more beautiful than I could have hoped!

After a few funny photos and after we were all cleaned up, we actually enjoyed some regular bites of cake. To be honest – it was amazing! It still tasted completely fresh and delicious! We had two flavors for our wedding cake, and the top tier ended up being the Margaritaville flavor since the baker said that strawberry flavor wouldn’t freeze well. It certainly wasn't visually as appealing as it originally looked, but taste over looks is sometimes OK! We’ve been enjoying little slices here and there all week and I think I may be a little sad when the whole thing is gone.

So there you have it - the full journey and story of our eating our anniversary cake (as if you needed to know!) :) Do you think we could refreeze some for next year! HA! :)