To Bake a Cake

Now don't you go thinking for even a second that I am the type of bride who will be baking her own cake. I am totally amazed by the brides who pull that off... and I'm more than a little bit envious of these very talented women. But, me? Bake a wedding cake? Not gonna happen. Unless our guests want to eat something that looks like this:

*Source

...and might just taste worse than it looks.

(On a side note, for those who are actually interested in baking and decorating their own cakes, check out the work of Miss Hamster on Weddingbee. She made her own fondant. Seriously. And it looks Ah-May-Zing.)

I however will be going the good ole' traditional route and hiring someone to bake my wedding cake. More expensive? Ok, yes. But (hopefully) guaranteed to taste and look great.

Before calling up bakers, the Architect and I sat down and had a little pow-wow to discuss what sort of cake (and potentially other desserts) we wanted at our wedding. We both LOVE cake, so it was easy for us to decide that we wanted a traditional wedding cake. We also decided that we wanted a second dessert choice -- something that screamed "wedding in Maine". So of course we decided to go with blueberry pie. ...or more aptly, a blueberry crumble with streusel topping, since this is a favorite dessert of the Architect's.

Blueberry crumble. Yum. Am I making you hungry yet?
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Next I got to work on finding inspiration photos for cake designs. Like with every other aspect of our wedding, we're going for designs that scream simple-yet-elegant, and traditional-with-a-modern-twist. Here are some of the ones that I particularly liked:

Simple. Pretty. And it incorporates our wedding colors!
*This image, and all of the other cakes below are from theknot

Marzipan fruits. Yum.

Hmmm... uneven tiers are a thought. ...and I'm loving the use of our wedding colors here!

This cake, and the rest below are not in our wedding colors, but could be easily altered to include a bright pop of orange.

White buttercream and chocolate sticks. Really, how can you go wrong?

I'm loving the asymmetrical ribbon of chocolate that swirls around this one.

Square tiers = modern?

Yum, yum, and yum. Please don't tell me you're not hungry after seeing all of these cakes.

Any guesses on which one we decided to go with? And just for kicks, which one is your favorite?