I delivered a wedding cake this morning that I've been thinking about since January, when I was referred by a friend to her brother for his summer wedding.

This was the most complicated cake I have created to date, with its modeling chocolate birds, layered fondant tail plumage, and piped buttercream tone-on-tone designs, reminiscent of a henna tattoo.  (Before researching and making this cake, I hadn't known that the peacock is a popular theme for Indian weddings, with its gorgeous jewel tones and symbolism of love, joy and beauty.)

Given the various elements involved - and the fact that I live with two little kids who aren't yet entirely self-sufficient - I drafted and followed a workback schedule that had me completing between 2-4 hours of work per day for the past 5 days leading up to this morning.  I am very happy to report that no unforeseen issues arose, I finished the cake yesterday afternoon, and delivered it this morning without a hitch! I have been worrying about this delivery all summer, especially after the slight bumps in the road (pun intended) from last month's gold bead wedding cake delivery.

But all's well that ends well, and given the sparkly, glamorous decor of the reception venue I saw when I dropped off the cake, I imagine that the couple and their friends are in the middle of a super fun party right about now.

Congratulations, Paul and Natasha!!  Thank you for letting me be a small part of your big day.

You guys, I am totally celebrating tonight!  I successfully delivered my first fully assembled wedding cake this afternoon!  

For the other two wedding cakes I have made (my brother's and my cousin's), I baked and crumb coated the three tiers separately before transporting them to the reception venues, and then stacked and piped the buttercream decorations on-site.  But for today's cake, the finishing decorations were too labor-intensive to risk waiting till the last minute, so I decided, after much deliberation, research and lost sleep, to finish the cake at home and transport it fully assembled to the venue - the gorgeous Ocho in Toronto.  (By the way, this is one of the couples that I made this engagement cake for back in April.)

For their reception, the bride and groom went with touches of this beautiful mercury glass as the basis for their decorating scheme.  (This is mercury glass, is it not??)

The bride found a pretty inspiration cake picture online and sent it my way:  a small white cake with simple gold beads surrounding it, which we decided to blow up into larger proportions to serve more than 100 of their friends and family.

I spent two nights after the girls' bedtime this week just molding and shaping tiny fondant beads and spray painting them with Americolor edible food color spray.  I should have counted, but I feel like there were about 600 of them.  At any rate, I did the math and the circumference of the three tiers together was over 7 feet.  So I made more than seven feet worth of tiny spray-painted sugar balls this week.  Move over Gwyneth, who leads the glamorous life now!

I wasn't worried about perfection with these little guys, since the inspiration aged mercury glass is by definition quite imperfect itself.  Oh - and this is just half of the lot of them!

Also, food coloring spray is awesome.

Here is the finished product as it stood in my kitchen last night, a fantastically moist vanilla cake enveloped by lemon-vanilla buttercream filling.

I barely slept last night, dreaming of all the potholes and construction and stop-and-go traffic on the Gardiner Expressway into Toronto, and I spent most of today planning how to repair the cake should it not make it to its destination in one piece.

After Clara awoke from her nap, I turned on the A/C in the car to its lowest setting and bundled the girls in jackets and blankets in preparation for the refrigerator on wheels they would ride in.  (In another twist, I had had childcare all worked out for the morning, but found out at the last minute that the cake could only be delivered after 3pm, so the girls got to tag along on the delivery.)  

I took the cake straight from the fridge...

... to the car...

... to the venue.  The Gardiner was just as bumpy and construction-y as I expected, but I took it slower than usual and left more space than usual, and we made it in plenty of time and mostly in one piece.  See there on the bottom row??

The temperature change from fridge from car to indoors, combined with all those dang potholes, caused a few of the fondant beads to loosen and fall off, but I had packed an emergency repair kit and brushed on a few drops of water to re-secure the loose beads.

As I've taken to saying with this caking hobby, trust the process.  Meaning, if you've planned carefully, things will turn out.  Usually.

Congratulations on your marriage, Paige and Graham!  Thank you for letting me be a small part of your big day.

Unrelated:  The girls couldn't have been happier at having been dragged along, as they were treated to tiny chocolate bars from the event coordinator.