Cooking Up a (Surprise) Wedding

Ingredients:
Take two people in love but sick of wedding planning, a minister, and four conspiratorial siblings.

Add four shocked parents, a magical setting, 50 guests who have no idea what is going on, a few flowers, and an amazing cake (yum).

The result? One of the greatest weddings I've ever been to (though perhaps I'm biased since I was the bride!) On December 29, 2006, Mike and I decided to get married our own way on the night of our engagement party, six months before our planned wedding. It was not easy to keep this secret for more than a month, but it was definitely worth it.

I would love to expound on the amazing food we had at our wedding, but to be honest, I didn't eat a bite of it. Call it bridal jitters, preoccupation, or whatever else you want, but the only thing I ate was my wedding cake. The picture here is showing us cutting the cake using my dad's sword from the Navy, just as my parents did in 1973 and my sister and her husband did last summer.

We got the cake from the Dessert Deli in Amherst and it is truly the best wedding cake I have ever eaten. We actually ended up choosing almost the same flavor cake as my sister had at her wedding: chocolate cake with raspberry buttercream filling and white buttercream on the outside. It had the added benefit of being really beautiful, painted with maroon and gold scrolls and a few flowers. Six days after the wedding I shared some of the cake with my coworkers and it still tasted terrific. This was a cake that was worth going back for seconds. I just can't wait until December 29, 2007 when we get to eat the defrosted top layer. If that tastes good, I'll know that this is truly the best cake in the world!

Dessert Deli
716 Maple Road
Amherst, NY 14221
716.689.2115
www.dessertdelibakery.com