Done!

Well, the wedding day has long since come and gone. In the rush to get over to the wedding and finish decorating before family pictures, I forgot my nice camera! I had to get myself and 4 kids all in our beautiful clothes and do everyone's hair. Luckily my husband was home to help, but we were still running behind the schedule that I was hoping for.
I was waiting for some professional pictures of the cake before posting this, but I have no idea how long that will be! So, here is a post about how the cake turned out!
Monday I cooked all the cakes and froze them. I was able to get most of them flat and froze them flat too. Getting the layers off of the cardboard cake boards after they were frozen was kind of hard. Some of the cake stuck, but it was ok because they were so dense that they were still flat.
Tuesday I made the rice krispie layer and iced all three layers. It took forever since I had to run to the store and buy more butter as I underestimated big time how much frosting I would need. I followed a very precise recipe to try to keep the shade of beige the same, but each batch was the tiniest bit different I think. I ended up going to bed with only the crumb coating on each layer.
The next morning I scraped down all of my work on the rice krispie layer and cut away at the krispies so that they didn't line up straight even with the cake board. I needed a 1/4 inch at least of board showing so that I could use that board to rest my bench scraper on and get a smooth finish.
I ended up getting the cakes all frosted and straight and smooth and back in the fridge during my 2 year olds nap time. Even though the frosting was finally smooth, it was marbled! I think part of the problem was the warm bench scraper changed the color just a little too each time it touched the frosting. I had no idea how to fix that and I decided that maybe it would look like I had planned to make a stone facade frosting all along! When I deemed the frosting hard enough, I took each layer out one at a time, placed my homemade stencil on it, poked holes everywhere I wanted the design, and then put the cake back in the fridge to harden again. I started the white curly/lacey design in the afternoon and was getting more and more disappointed as I went. I kept thinking, "Come on. I know I can do better than this!" But once it's on, it's on! You can scrape the white off if there is a major mistake, which happened a few times, but it leaves a trace behind so I tried not to do that. Finally I added the tiny pearls to the design and then accidentally hit the super soft frosting with my hand! Yes, I did. Then my son did too. So before I ruined it more I put it in the fridge and let it harden.
That evening (Wednesday, day before the wedding), I put each layer in a cardboard box and secured each box in my van and drove over to the house where the reception would be. I got the cakes out and set them on top of each other, only slipping once and indenting it in the middle layer. By this time I just wanted to get the big pearls around each layer and thought that I could patch it up the next day before pictures. I finished and everyone thought it looked great, you know, because they weren't sitting right up next to it like I was. I got the cake into the fridge and went home to bed about 10 pm.
The day of the wedding I made it back to the house in time to get the cake out, put it on the cake table, decorate with candles and glasses I had brought, and try to track down my flowers! I finally found the smallest bouquet of leftover flowers and no one seemed to know where any more were. I was out of time so I stuck what I could into the top and into the cups and hoped no one would notice the places that didn't get patched up or hidden behind flowers.
And you know what? From a distance you really couldn't tell! Even my shaky white lacey details looked ok! And when dusk came and the candles made the sequined table cloth sparkly, it was beautiful.
What a relief. I was so tired the next day. I wanted to sleep for 3 days, but that couldn't really happen. So I just took it as easy as I could and reveled in the satisfaction of having that huge project accomplished! I don't know when I will be up to that task again. It was fun, but the stress of making mistakes on such an important cake was huge.
Some day I will get more pictures for better documentation of the final product!
Until then, here is the picture my husband took on his phone: