Wedding Entry #6 | Cake? What cake?

Cakes are expensive! And let’s face it, I have never had a good tasting cake that also looked good (don’t hate me for this, I am not really a cake person). So when my friend Kasey had these delicious cupcakes at her wedding a light bulb went off! I changed my mind on the cake and wanted to go with cupcakes. They are fresher, more modern, and sort of unique, plus you don’t have to rent plates (or forks for that matter) and no one has to be paid to cut and serve it either.

This was all a great idea until I got a quote from the cupcake store (which did not give discounts for large orders) and they were $4.00 a piece! My money saving idea had been a bust since the cakes I was looking at weren’t even $500.00 (125 people x 4, you get the idea).

So, back to square one and the wheels are spinning, some time allotment budgeted + my friend Katie will be there to help = I will MAKE the cupcakes myself! I was already making the centerpieces anyways so what is one more hour? 

I immediately hopped online and found a Paula Dean recipe with real butter and cream and all the really yummy good stuff to make them from scratch. A few tries with the icing and they were perfect! After perfecting the recipe I only had about 250 more days to go, so that was just one more thing off the checklist. Did I mention I over plan?

Oh, I also saved $430 (total spent was about $70) but the time spent was actually about 3 total hours on the cupcakes, and that included making custom chocolate monograms to go on top as well. The result for the bottom two tiers, 125 red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese icing and a chocolate monogram!

You will notice the top tier is a cake. I went to Publix grocery store for this and they custom made exactly what I drew out on paper for them as a “go by.” They asked me if this was for a wedding, when I asked why, they told me that it would be about $54, but if it was for a shower it would be $22… When I asked them what the difference was since it was all the same ingredients, they said that even inch cakes were “wedding” cakes and odd inch cakes were for all other occasions. 

Needless to say, the top tier of my cake was 7” and that saved me another $32.