Desserts are a Family Tradition

While some come for "the I do's and stay for the free booze," many stay for the cake! ...and desserts!

Once you have your menu in place, you have to create and finalize your dessert menu. Other than your wedding cake, you typically need to offer a variety of desserts to your guests as well. Desserts and cake especially, can really add up, but somehow I managed to pull off a practically-free dessert table!

First of all, if you are having your wedding cake made by a bakery, be sure to never actually mention that it's a wedding cake. This is the BIGGEST insider secret and piece of advice I can give you. Once the word "wedding" spews from your mouth, the bakery sees nothing but dollar signs. On average, a wedding cake costs about $6-8 (or more) per slice! If you have 150 guests at your wedding like I did, that is $900-1,200!!! Absolutely insane right?! I don't know about you, but I don't even like cake...unless it's ice cream cake. Needless to say, I was certainly not spending that kind of money on a cake. (I honestly was ready to skip the cake altogether.)

Luckily, my brother in law, John, has a super baking-savvy mom! Mrs. Ceal is hands down the best when it comes to cakes and other goodies! She does not bake for profit, but more so as a hobby, so she was happy to take on the task! She gave us an extremely fair price, which was the tiniest fraction of the average cost. We chose to have the bottom tier chocolate with a raspberry filling, and the middle tier as well as Brad and I's top tier vanilla with coconut buttercream filling. Like I said earlier, I don't even like cake, but when I had a piece of hers, I was in heaven! It was amazing! Long story short, you can have a beautiful, (and honestly, a much better tasting cake), made by someone special to you, and also at a much cheaper cost.

My cake topper.

***Another way to save money in regards to your cake is to create your own cake topper! I made my own topper for $1. Read about it here! (Link coming soon). Be sure to check out the DIY section in the menu bar for more fun, budget-friendly wedding projects!.***

After your cake is taken care of, you have to decide on your "filler" desserts. Instead of just buying a bunch of random things, I had all of Brad and I's grandmother's make a dessert. Each dessert was a family tradition, so symbolically, the desserts represented the unification of several families and their traditions. For example, one of Brad's grandmothers is Polish, so she often makes chruściki. Her and Brad's grandfather made a ton of it for the wedding. Another set of grandparents were from the South, so we had cute little dessert cups filled with banana pudding, each elegantly topped with cool whip and a mini Nilla Wafer. Other things like jelly cookies, black bottoms and more were made as well. Plus, our grandparents brought them straight to the wedding, so we did not have to worry about transporting them.

After the grandmothers all decided on their desserts, I decided to buy just a couple desserts from BJ's to supplement what we already had. I bought things like cookies, brownie bites and even pizzelles. My total cost at BJ's was less than $30. We had the perfect amount of desserts for our 150 guests, and even had a decent amount leftover for us to take home.

In summary, now that the wedding has come and gone, when I look back, one of the coolest things to me were our grandmothers' desserts. How neat is it that their desserts alone represented several sides of family coming together, all while also being delicious. It was a win win! If you decide to set up your dessert table in a similar way, I have a feeling you wont be disappointed.

That's it for now, so, until next week, my lovelies!

p.s. Life's too short. Smash the cake in his/her face.

xoxo

Gabby