Bad Wedding Cake = Good Marriage

In lieu of a financial refund for our less than stellar wedding cake, J and I came to a decision to ask Michele Coulon if she would provide us a free confectionary for my father's 70th birthday next year and she agreed.

So that's that. Wedding cake drama over. Although, I can't lie, a little bitterness still lingered on.

Then I began to run across a number of women who also suffered wedding cake disappointments. It felt good to know I have some sistah's out there, yo!

My favorite of these stories came when I was researching a post for the "What's New" blog I write at InsideWeddings.com. I do a series called "EC: Q and A" where I interview vendors who are members of the magazine's "Editor's Circle." I was working on an article about bridal designer, Claire Pettibone, whose dresses I absolutely adore (unfortunately, they aren't quite made for my body type but that's another blog post).

While doing a bit of research about Miss Pettibone, I came across a 2004 interview in which she described her wedding.  The question was: "Were there any surprises at your wedding?" And here was her response:

CP:   Well, the cake. We definitely had the ugliest wedding cake in history. (Laughs.) I don’t know what exactly happened. The cake was supposed to be a very blush pink with off-white roses all over it. The cake arrived, and it was hot pink with a big white heart. (Laughs.) So either it was not my cake that was delivered, or we had a complete meltdown... You know, there’s so much planning and stress and worry that go into a wedding...you go through all that and on your day you just have to let it all go and enjoy the day. So I did not throw a fit when I saw this ugly cake. I just looked at it and said, “Oh my god, let’s put some flowers in front it, try to hide it, and slice it up before anybody could see it.” (Laughs.) We had a great day. I always tell brides, don’t let anything ruin your day. It’s not about the cake. It’s not about any of that. You’re marrying the man of your dreams and it should be a beautiful day for you and your guests. 


It was like the Universe was talking to me directly. I had to write to Claire and tell her how fortuitous the timing of this was. I briefly explained my situation and thanked her for putting it into perspective. Then I added that maybe receiving a bad wedding cake is like having it rain on your wedding day: perhaps it's a sign of good luck.

A few days later she wrote back. She told me she was approaching her 17th anniversary and that yes, bad cake = good marriage.

So there you go. Who knew bad piping would turn out to be a sign from the heavens?

A few of Mrs. Pettibone's amazing designs.

A Wedding Registry Mix-Up

Thank you for your feedback regarding the wedding cake. I'll update the situation in my next post. But for now I wanted to share this funny little story about a mix up J and I encountered with our wedding registry. I had previously written the story in an e-mail to some friends so I copied and pasted it below. Enjoy!

J and I received a gift off of our registry from two couples in New Jersey whom neither of us, nor our parents, know. 

So me, being the honest schmuck that I am, went to great lengths to try to figure out who our mystery gift givers, L & M Brady and P and S Wallace, are and why they sent us a wedding gift--a very pricey wedding gift I might add. (names have been changed fyi)

First I called Bloomingdales and explained the situation. The woman told me the gift had been ordered on-line so there was probably no mistake and that they had no protocol for tracking down unknown gift givers. She also said I was the only "Alison Block" registered. She told me I was very honest and should probably just "keep it and send a nice 'thank you' note"

However, I was still curious so I turned to Internet White Pages. I found Lois's number and called. It rang but no one picked up. Next, I found P Wallace's and figured I'd give it one more shot before resigning myself to accepting our lovely crystal wine glasses with a clear conscious.  

Unfortunately, P picked up the phone. 

I explained the situation and told her I was very embarrassed but could not place her or her friends.

"We're from the Beach Club," she said cheerfully. 

Silence from my end.

"I'm Julie's mother?"

Silence from my end.

"You're father is Thomas Block, correct?"

"No, he's not," I said.

"Oh no," she said. "I'm so embarrassed."

At this point I was hoping she would appreciate my honestly to such a degree that she would thank me and encourage me to keep the gift and enjoy my life as a newlywed.

Unfortunately, she did not. 

Instead she asked me if I could Fed-Ex the items back to her. 

I, being the honest schmuck that I am, told her I would. She gave me a fed-ex number to use for the charges.

In the background, her husband chimed in: "Make sure she tears up the number after she uses it," a command which she then repeated to me, as if this was all some sort of elaborate scam to steal their fed-ex shipping number.

"Hey," I said, "I'm the one that went to great lengths to track you down and return these gifts in the first place."

In the end, my father suggested I just write them a check in the amount of the gifts purchased (minus shipping of course) and send it to them instead. This seemed like a simpler solution, and ether gives us the excuse to purchase the rest of the overpriced crystal wine glass stemware, or exchange it for something more practical.

Karma, people, karma.

J was able to find the couple the woman was looking for: in the New York Times Wedding Section. Judging from the article, my guess is that we could have used the wine glasses more than they could!

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/22/fashion/weddings/alison-block-timothy-poore-weddings.html

PS- The follow up to this story is that P ended up sending us a little gift off our registry on purpose as a "thank you" for returning the gift she sent us off our registry by accident. Did you follow that? 

Opinions Please!

My wedding was so wonderful and so amazing in so many ways.

That's why I feel completely guilty over the fact that my mind keeps obsessing about the one little detail that let J and me down: our wedding cake.

As some of you may recall, we chose our cake baker, Michele Coulon, because her family used to own a restaurant  that my husband (I love saying that!) and his family frequented while he was growing up. We had to get special permission from our venue to allow us to bring in an outside baker, and even pay a little extra, but it was worth it because the decision meant so much to J and his family. Plus, Michele's a well-known, respected San Deigo cake designer, renown for making cakes that taste as good as they look.

We met with Michelle twice to discuss the design of the cake, the final time being just a few weeks before the big day.  We gave her a picture to serve as a guideline for the design. We told her she didn't have to copy it, but we'd like her to base her design on it.  We also agreed that the colors would alternate pink and gold with each layer.

However, when we walked into our reception hall the day of the wedding, we were both quite stunned about the final product. Of course, during the wedding, we didn't have time to get worked up. We had so many other wonderful things to focus on! But it was one of the first items we discussed the following afternoon as we slowly descended from our wedding high.

Now, I'm not an expert, but I've watched enough cake baking shows on television to know what good  piping is supposed to look like. The piping on our cake looked amateurish, uneven and hurried. The pattern of the design Michele chose lacked the symmetry, geometry, and flow of the cake in the photo we had given her to imitate.  And finally, the colors were not what we had agreed upon. There was no gold to be found and somehow, one layer had mysteriously become black.

I honestly have no idea what went wrong.

Michele's portfolio is full of cakes that resemble pristine works of art. The only work of art this cake represented was a first grader's finger painting project. (Okay, maybe that's a little harsh.)

Now, the one positive thing I will say is that the cake tasted amazing (or so I heard as I wasn't actually able to squeeze anything else into my dress by that time in the evening). Guests continually approached us in the weeks following the event to tell us how delicious our cake was. However, not one person complimented us on its appearance, a rare occurrence for Michele's cakes I'm sure.

We've spoken with Michele and she knows about our disappointment.  She says she feels terrible that we were unsatisfied and that she apparently misinterpreted our request. She said to let her know if we wanted financial compensation.

I'm not sure what I want. We were just truly disappointed and baffled. The cake was the one thing we weren't worried about going into the event and it turned out to be the only part of the day with which we weren't thrilled.

What do you think? Should I complain further? Write a negative review on Yelp? Ask for my money back? Suck it up?

Our wedding cake was one of the things I was most looking forward to. Now I cringe every time I see it in our photos. Of course, at the end of the day, I'm married to a wonderful man and I know that's the most important thing. I guess you could say I want to have my cake and eat it too.

The cake we wanted

The cake we got.

Wedding Slide Show

We just got our professional pictures! They are AMAZEBALLS! Elle Jae did a fantastic job. We couldn't be happier. Here's a link to the slide show. I hope you love it as much as I do!

Wedding Photos!

I've been a terrible bride blogger! Life got so chaotic before the wedding that I just wasn't able to keep up with my posts. I apologize! 

But the wedding was amazing and pretty much went out without a hitch except for a few minor things, the least of which being that I caught a cold three days before the big day. On Monday, we had to visit our stationary lady to finalize menus and programs. She was sick and I'm pretty sure that's where I was exposed.

I didn't even know it was possible to catch a cold before your wedding! I thought your body would naturally hold off those evil germs until after all of the excitement died down. 

Fortunately, my brilliant make-up artist was able to cover up my red nose, and my amazing Matron of Honor, who had just gotten over the whooping cough herself, was armed with cough suppressants which helped me make it through my ceremony. 

I have so much more to talk about but we're still recovering from honeymoon jet lag so I'm just going to share some of the photos from the big day that our guests have shared with us. I hope you love it as much as I do!!!

Oh what a week!

Last week I had an anxiety attack in the middle of the night when I realized we only had three weekends left until the wedding and every Saturday and Sunday was already booked with stuff to do. This was on top of the fact that my stomach had been in knots for most of the week. I could hardly eat. I had what I like to call "Montezuma's Wedding Revenge" if you catch my drift.  All of this was, however, very useful in helping me reach my goal wedding weight three weeks ahead of schedule.

I was supposed to drive to San Diego for another dress fitting this weekend, but the morning after my anxiety attack, I called Roxie (my amazing alterations lady) and begged her to postpone it until next week, which she was totally fine with. Thank God.

J and I enjoyed a nice relaxing weekend at home--still filled with a variety of wedding-related errands. I booked a last minute emergency facial at my favorite spa yesterday, which was a Godsend. It should be a law that every bride three weeks away from her wedding should have to do get a facial. Seriously.

Some of the knots last week were cased by the fact that there's been drama, such as family members canceling out last minute for no good reason. Other knots came from those obscure issues that, for some reason, no one else except the bride-to-be can solve, such as special meal requests, figuring out what hotel room the flower girls can stay in with their baby sitter, and realizing that if we're going to do a wine ceremony, we're going to need a table, a glass, and...something else...what was it? Oh yes: wine.

Oh, and then there's the little issue of UPS stealing my wedding band.

Yup, my wedding band was meant to have been delivered on Thursday. J was home all day and the door bell never rang. Yet somehow, there was a note from UPS saying they'd stopped by.  The next day,  UPS handed J a beat up box. The box contained a bag within a bag, a box, and another bag.

But no ring.

Our jeweler filed a claim with UPS for the missing ring, which thankfully was insured. He's already started making us a replacement ring. It should be ready in time for the wedding.

What. A. Week.

My wedding coordinator swears this is normal. She said she'd be more worried if I weren't panicking.

I say: bring on the honeymoon.

31 Days!

I feel like such a bad blogger, but between work, an LA commute and, oh yeah, that wedding thing being a month away, sadly my poor little blog has been pretty neglected. I'm sorry!!!

My weekends have been filled with errands: buying goodies at Costco for the gift bag (right before our membership expires so we don't have to renew, haha), finding J a tux, exchanging items off of our registry that were sent to us in error/broken, and finally, last weekend was my bachelorette party in Santa Barbara. My friend C organized it for me since none of my bridesmaids are in LA (hell, one of them isn't even in the country). She did an amazing job! We rented a limo, went wine tasting, pre-partied in the hotel room, then had an awesome Mexican  dinner. (I'll post pictures asap I promise!)  Next weekend is filled with our tasting, a dress fitting, a meeting with the invitations lady to choose menus, programs, etc, and a meeting with our cake baker.

PHEW! That's a lot. I can't believe we're in the home stretch! I will tell you, I feel pretty damn good right now. I think we're on top of things (knock on wood!) The RSVP's are trickling in...we've gotten back more than half which, in this day and age, isn't bad I believe.

J had a wed dream the other night in which our wedding coordinator forgot his tuxedo shoes. You know when J is having wed dreams, things are getting serious! Haha.

Anyway, I just wanted to check in and say hello. I will post photos from the party as well as a picture of our invitation (which I'm sooo happy with!) asap, I swear.