The Icing on the Cake

Before I got engaged to Mr. Blue Moon, I remember reading about the wedding planning processes of other couples and thinking "this is going to be so hard!" There are just so many things to make decisions about when it comes to planning a wedding. I recently saw a statistic somewhere that teachers make, on average, 1,500 decisions per day. That tells me that I am stressed enough in my everyday life! That's why my wedding planning philosophy boils down to keeping things as simple as possible for everyone involved.

All of this said, I picked out a wedding cake vendor without going to a single cake tasting with her. That's right. I have not tasted a sample of my wedding cake a SINGLE time, and I don't plan to. And I am totally ok with it. 

As I wrote about in our hunt for a reception space, Mr. Blue Moon and I will be the first couple to use the amazing Graystone Quarry Hillside Pavilion. Normally, Graystone Quarry is all-inclusive and has a team of seriously top-notch Nashville vendors to make their couples' weddings perfect. Since Mr. Blue Moon and I are operating on a limited budget, and will be the venue's first event, the owner kindly agreed to let us book whoever we want from her vendor team as part of our contract, but also bring in outside vendors to help us stay in our budget. 

As we were looking through Graystone Quarry's vendor team, Mr. Blue Moon and I were dazzled. We were especially dazzled by the wedding cakes on offer. Take a look at these beauties! 

Via Dessert Designs by Leland, Graystone Quarry's wedding cake vendor

Via Graystone Quarry

As you can see, these cakes are beyond gorgeous. Of course, Mr. Blue Moon and I will not need more than three tiers, and even that will be a lot for 80 or 85 people. After looking through the vendor's website, we realized that their work is a lot more ornate than what we had pictured for our down-home, family wedding. Though I am sure Desserts by Leland can pull off a simple cake just as beautifully, we decided that we could get what we wanted in a cake and stay in our budget, too!

As I said in my catering post, we were leaning towards just having our food caterer take care of our wedding cake.  CJ's Catering creates amazing cakes, and Mr. Blue Moon pointed out that many of the pictures of their work were cakes in the simple, white free-iced design that I had my eye on anyway. 

Simple, understated, lovely! Via CJ's Catering

Blue Mom and I decided to schedule another tasting with CJ's, this time for cake, and we went in to devour this little slice of heaven. 

Personal Photo

A yellow cake with strawberry filling and whipped icing, this cake sample was moist and delicious! I thought this was a great slice, and I am not even a cake girl (normally I ask for the tiniest slice possible to be polite, and then scrape off all the icing, too). Blue Mom wanted to check out one more cake caterer though, because she was looking for a more traditional wedding cake, with the white cake and buttercream icing. Since I know that Blue Mom prioritizes the cake a lot more than I do, I agreed to let her look around some more while I headed back to Mississippi for my work week. 

Blue Mom decided to try a local cakery called Tis So Sweet. She had heard great things about it, and it also came highly recommended by our wedding planner. After her scheduled tasting, she called me raving about how amazing the cakes were. She was so obsessed with it that she was even trying to figure out how to mail me a sample! I told her she could keep the samples for her and Daddy Blue Moon to enjoy at home, but I did go on the vendor's Facebook page to see some of the cake creations for myself.

These are amazing. Via Tis So Sweet. 

Here's one closer to the simple style we're going for. Via Tis So Sweet.

So that was that. Without sampling a single bite, I took Blue Mom at her word and decided on Tis So Sweet. We are going to have a three tier round vanilla cake with raspberry preserve filling and vanilla buttercream. It will be simply iced, and include a custom cake topper I ordered off of Etsy. Tis So Sweet is also going to do two dozen chocolate vegan cupcakes, which we will offer to guests instead of a groom's cake (still very popular in the South). 

I am so glad that I had Blue Mom's help in the cake tasting department, and it is great to know that I have someone at home I can trust to make important decisions. And who could be better than my mom to help me in this department? I really thought I might be a bride who needs to decide ALL OF THE THINGS, but my job as a teacher just really prevents me from having my finger in every pie (or cake) so to speak. I'm glad that I'm getting what without having to make multiple trips back home for tastings! 

Do you have someone besides your fiance that is helping with your wedding decisions, or do you prefer to get all the options across your desk before you approve anything? What was the easiest decision to make?