Twosome Tuesday on Thursday: Two Thoughts on Wedding Cakes, Part 2

...continued from Tuesday's post, Twosome Tuesday: Two Thoughts on Wedding Cakes, Part 1:                                                                                                                                                                                            

Thought 2: The design of the cake.

This isn't a new thought.  In fact, we went to the cake designer with this idea in our plan, and she poo-poohed its necessity.                                                                                                                                                              

Separated Tiered Cakes.  Photos thanks to Wilton.com

The cake design we proposed had short columns dividing each tier.  It's not necessarily that the bride preferred the look of separated cakes.  In fact, we were choosing short dividers to limit the impact of the separation.  We chose a separated style for 2 reasons:                                                                                                                                                   

1)  My mom has decorated several wedding cakes and always preferred transporting a separated cake, which could travel in separate pieces and be assembled on site.  I remember her trying to repair a stacked cake that hadn't fared around a too-sharp corner.  She got it to look nice again, but her nerves were well frazzled.  Why take the chance?  Wedding cakes should not look like the Leaning Tower of Pisa.                                                                                                                         

2)  When the cake is unstacked for serving, an already separated cake breaks apart into plated, free-standing cakes.  It is a fairly fast and easy project.  Additionally, the cakes are fully frosted, including the tops.  The wedding cake decorator took exception to the fact that the stacked cake was more difficult to divide, and wouldn't look as nice.  She said any wedding cake, disassembled and partly cut was fairly unsightly, and our plan wouldn't prevent that.  She also said it was difficult to have attractive tops on the cake sections that would be seen through the sides.  In retrospect, I have to wonder why, as each would be done individually, not after assembling.                                                                                                                  

This one wasn't too bad looking,
but my hands were a mess.

As I took apart Princess Sassy and Prince Steadfast's cake, I believe my reasoning was upheld.  The cakes were messy to deal with, as I had to grab the plates underneath each section through the frosting border.  Sticky.  Gooey.                                                                                                                                

The underside of the middle layer...Frosting and cake
torn off the base layer

The worst part?  The appearance of the decapitated layers.  Keeping in mind that to cut and serve these large, round cakes, the cake is cut in concentric circles, then cut into sections, or in a grid pattern, you can see that most of the pieces would have no side -or top- frosting.  With Sassy's cake some of the cake came off with the section above.  If cut the 'official' wedding cake serving piece size, you'd be served a piece of cake 1 inch wide, 2 inches deep, and almost 6 inches tall,
 devoid of frosting and possibly torn on top.  Not that I'd consider being rid of the frosting a bad thing, nutritionally, but cosmetically... not so great.

Stand shown on eweddingcake.com

This really separated stand design would allow consideration of a couple of different options.  A wedding cake with a layer on each section would mean fully decorated cakes that don't have the problems shown above.  It would also allow for different types of cakes or desserts, like the initially desired cheesecakes on the lower, with a more traditional, but modest, two-tiered wedding cake at the top.