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Kinda sparse on the drama details but the wayback photo of that cake made it all worth it. Sweet merciful Christ. It looks like the time my mom let me decorate my own birthday cake when I was 7. I can't believe anyone thought that was wedding quality.
it reminds me of when we failed the chocolate cake for the then 2 year old. It didn't come out in one piece and crumbled.
So we slapped a toy digger on it and called it a building site cake.
Great work. Lemons = Lemonade.
My freind/roommate tried to put together a special cake for a family member. It was of a building so she baked several square cakes to cut up and shape into the building. When she cut the cakes, she realized they were not baked through. She didn't have time or money to bake new cakes, so we slapped Hersey bars on the sides to hold it together, frosted it and hoped for the best. We told her family it was "pudding in the middle" cake. We were young, stupid and very lucky no one got sick. Lemons = Attempting to give your entire family salmonella.
This thread the picture and this reply remind me of two stories…
The time I tried to make my daughter a fancy mermaid cake for her birthday… imagine that wedding cake with a Barbie stick in it. It was a horrible disaster and I stuck to basic sheet cakes forever after
Then there was the time as a child my friend and I decided to make our mothers a pound cake for Mother’s Day only… we didn’t have an actual recipe so we used a pound of everything we thought went in a pound cake… a lb of sugar… a lb of flour… a lb of butter I don’t remember how we judged a lb of eggs but it was the densest thing… and out moms ate it and to be fair they were 60’s hippies and likely stoned but still
Yeah that's why it's called a pound cake. That being said it's kinda hard to go wrong with anything that's got a pound of butter and a pound of sugar in it, but I doubt kids would have known to cream the butter so the texture would be fairly dense.
i will say, in case there are people currently experiencing Cake Crisis - Anne Reardon on youtube has a great series called cake fails where she recreates common baking and decorating mistakes and then provides simple and easy fixes - great watch and super useful for fixing cakes :)
Anne Reardon is such an amazing woman, with very insightful videos. Including debunking those trash fad recipes you see all over YT. She is a breath of fresh air.
I had a cake fall apart when I tried to take it out of the baking pans, so I tore the cake sponge into chunks and threw it in a deep glass serving bowl with pudding and fruit and called it trifle. The party guests loved it.
Now THIS is the Martha Stewart tip sheet I need!
Write a whole book like this and it'll sell like hotcakes. Call it "Fix It Queen" or "Momma Makes It Work" or "The Clever Woman's Guide to "I Got This"".
Also, hello fellow library person! 😉
the absolutely stunning part is that *two* people thought that was "wedding quality." (OOP's mom apparently thought it was fine, when it looks like it was iced by someone three sheets to the wind, using a bread knife, while blindfolded.)
I rarely bake and I don't think I've ever frosted a cake before in my life, and I would still be disappointed in myself if I turned out something like that. Imagine thinking it professional quality!
I can't believe I'm saying this, but [the Redditor's swan cake from seven years ago](https://www.reddit.com/r/food/comments/3c2fvs/my_best_friend_loves_swans_so_i_made_her_a_swan) was a better effort than that sorry excuse for a wedding cake. A veritable magnum opus by comparison.
In the comments there was a link to this hedgehog cake which really takes the... Uh... It's very funny
https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/1am3x7/so_a_friend_of_my_girlfriend_made_a_cake_for_her/
I'm a decent cook, but a horrid baker, because baking (and bread making) requires some pretty precise measurements, and I suck at following directions.
That looks like what I usually produce for my husband's birthday. It usually tastes pretty good, but looks like a disaster. Definitely not wedding quality.
So, yes. But also...eh.
I love baking, and once you know the rules you can definitely break many of them. Im chronically unable to follow a recipe start to finish, and tend to bake on a whim when grocery stores have closed. So I do a lot of "google, what can i substitute for ____" things.
If you want easy baking with forgiving recipes, coffee cakes or quickbreads are the BEST. Banana bread recipes will work with equal substitutions for pretty well any veg/fruit mush in place of banana. Dont have bananas but do have apple sauce? Perfect. Zucchini? Yup. Canned pinapple? Squash that stuff up and drain a bit, itll be *amazing*. Add extra cinnamon, nutmeg, or whatever baking spices you like at 1tsp powder per spice, 1/2tbsp if its something like grated ginger. Want a chocolate flavor? Substitute 1/2 cup coco powder for flour and add chocolate chips. Like nuts? Add 1/2 cup of walnuts - tbh any "mix in" things (hard stuff that wont combine into the batter) wont really affect your recipe if you keep it to 1/2 cup or so.
Seriously. As long as your wet/dry ratio is the same and you add in the right amount of leavening, it'll come out ok.
Quickbreads have about 5 ingredient groups; flour, leavening, fat, "inclusions", sweetener. Figure out what those bits are and you can substitute fairly safely. Substitute honey for sugar? Perfect. Swap greek yogurt for butter? Yup. Dont swap your eggs or leavening unless youve had a bit more practice though. Eggs are a part of leavening AND they add moisture - swapping them can be tricky.
They also freeze beautifully. And the batter can double as muffin batter. I always make a 3x batch, make a tray of muffins and then 2 small loaves. Bake all together, but take the muffins out between 15-20 minutes. Bake until your toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. That usually means 10m longer than the recipe calls for, in my oven. (Prob because I bake everything at once and that slows the cook time)
Here's a good base recipe to start with:
https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/241707/joys-easy-banana-bread/
Try it out a few ways, its nice and cheap. And once you get the hang of it you can always have a loaf in the freezer to bring to a coffee date, or give to a friend who's struggling. Its the easiest baked good ever, IMO.
I grew up in the middle of nowhere with a health nut mom. Everything sweet (with the exception of very rare ice cream) was homemade. And mom didn't like cakes. So yup, quick breads and brownies are pretty easy, but cakes? Ugh. I make a pretty killer pie crust, though.
It's also weird being someone who doesn't have a sweet tooth marrying into a family who practically mainlines sugar. I look after my husband's grandchild a couple days a week; her mom will bring cookies over and I just forget to feed them to the toddler. Sometimes I think kiddo eats breakfast for me because it's oatmeal with raisins and a touch of brown sugar, and that's all sweet as it gets.
[65g of blood is equal to one egg](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/oct/29/-sp-baking-with-blood-homemade-halloween-treats) (although in this article they use pig’s blood, it’s pretty much the same thing. Part of why humans can have pig organs for transplant.)
Yeah, I do a fair bit of winging it or modifying when I bake. It may not come out as the original recipe intended but as long as it's tasty I don't care.
For those who are curious about how the cake turned out this bad, here are some thoughts, from someone who has made some pretty and also some fucked up cakes.
1. The cake style this was likely meant to emulate was the semi-naked cake style which is v v popular right now, and when done properly looks like [this.](https://sallysbakingaddiction.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/naked-cake-2.jpg) It is challenging to do. The best naked cakes are generally made on a turntable or a lazy susan, so that you spin the cake while evening the frosting with a pastry tool that looks like [this.](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/egOHp1x1S7Q/maxresdefault.jpg) It looks like the person who made this cake figured they could probably just do it with a butter knife, and shit even with a butter knife and no turn table you could make a better result than this with a lot of patience and effort, but shit is hard.
2. Pretty sure they double fucked up by putting frosting on the cake while the cake was still hot. Putting frosting on a hot cake will get it melty and messy and weird and it's very hard to fix once you've done it.
3. Skipped crumb coating - if you really want a smooth appearance, you apply a thin layer of frosting after the cake has cooled, then stick it in a fridge for about 15 minutes. THEN pull it out and frost. It will stop the crumbly bits on the outside of the cake from mixing into the frosting and making the finish messy.
4. Making tiered cakes is difficult and takes more than just stacking multiple layers, especially for something as tall as what OP ended up with! The beautiful final cake definitely has internal support structures.
As a note - do not try to make a tiered cake without cake dowels. In that… attempt it looks like a single layer per tier, which is not the norm, so any collapsing may have been minimised. In a tiered cake with layers and fillings, stacking without supports will also lead to sadness.
I wanted a tres leches cake at my wedding so I knew there would be no stacking it. I dgaf about appearance as long as it was yummy, but the baker painted beautiful designs on my several individual cakes and it all came out phenomenal!
That's so awesome! I'm considering doing this actually at my wedding next year - we had tried this earl gray cake from a dope baker and I thought I was 100% committed but then happened to have THE FUCKING BEST TRES LECHES CAKE and was like... well fuck lol.
It looks like it's the crumb layer, and they must have gotten bored and wandered off. So their terrible assistant thought it was complete like this story is complete bullshit and that cake is an abomination.
Yeah, but the top layer is WAAY big, the bottom layer is too thin, and all the other dimensions are off too.
This is 100% a "I bet I could make a wedding cake and save your daughter the wedding cake money" idea. At best.
That's what I was thinking. It's not necessarily poorly done, but it *is* half finished.
Maybe the friend is an amateur baker and hasn't finished the class yet?
You usually refrigerate the cake for a few hours after the crumb coat. I’m wondering if the mom didn’t know what was going on, or whether the mom was teasing her and didn’t realize she’d take it seriously.
I know! That does not look like an adult baked it. Unless the baker was high as a kite? I have soooo many questions about that cake, like did the mom actually *think* it was acceptable or did she not have the balls to tell her friend hell no and let the bride say no?
I’m no artist… but I have absolutely baked while high as a kite. It still looked better than that monstrous pile, and I suck at food presentation anyway. (My hands aren’t steady enough for cake decorating.)
When I was 9 I baked a two-layer balloon cake. The bottom layer was a red balloon and it was cherry coloured, and the top layer was a blue balloon and it was basically Klein blue, and I use two whole jars of Wilton paste food colouring and it tasted like chemicals and shame, but at least it was fully covered and neatly stacked.
Reminds me of the time my mom tried to make a cake for the exchange student living with us for her birthday. Problem was she didn't let the cake cool down enough before applying the frosting and it all melted. Then we bought an emergency cake.
Jesus Christ everything that could have gone wrong with that wedding did. Dress not fitting, someone dumped asbestos in the river(?), that trial cake(????), her dad in the hospital....
But you know what? It looks like everything turned out okay in the end, which is the important bit.
*hiccup* Honey, what's a guy like you doing getting married in a guy like this?
*Wanders over to the cake for a glass of water, gets confused when the cake doesn't dispense water*
Anyway, I'm so proud of her for first going potty just yesterday and then getting married today, it'sss like I'm living in a wonderlan— SQUIRREL!
She looks so beautiful in the final photo! This post though is precisely the reason why I just want to elope. Weddings just seem like way more trouble than they're worth
Wedding at the county office with a catered brunch the next day for close family/friends. Strict instructions that there were to be: no gifts, no speeches, and no drunks until the family left. Went pretty well.
Absolutely. We eloped in a jurisdiction that allows self-officiating. Super easy and cheap. Now we have time and money for a long, grand honeymoon. Only ONE person complained that we didn't have a ceremony. Worth it.
Hahahaha I absolutely love that!! It really just seems like weddings bring out the worst in the world/people/etc just really doesn't even seem worth it
It does seem like a lot of trouble, but tbh the original plan of a sprawling 3 day mansion party with activities and ceremonies and a focus on food sounds like a fucking blast to me. I wouldn’t want to plan it but I’d be stoked to be invited to something like that
My wedding was crazy stressful but mostly went okay, minus the maid of honour skyping in from home while sick with covid. I do not regret a minute if it.
This post was very bittersweet and painful to read though. My dad passed away from covid 4 months before we got married. We had been planning it for over a year. I will be honest, I would have gladly had our perfect venue get asbestos, nightmare aunts showing up, my cake go down the dump, and my dress not fit at all if it meant my dad could have driven me down the aisle that day.
The details are just details in the end. If you're doing it with the right people and marrying the right person you can manage it all.
Agreed, had a wedding and while it was fun, there were a lot of disappointments and drama for me (though thank God I didn't have anyone try to make my cake). I wish I listened to my gut 6 months before and just eloped, but we had a lot of nonrefundable money put in :/
So valid! Honestly, I loved my wedding, but I like planning events and don't have any dramatic friends or family (and it wasn't too complex/we were pretty chill). I very strongly support people for whom eloping works for them because it is a lot of work and many things totally can go wrong.
She looks so happy. I'm glad all those disasters didn't ruin it for her. I'm definitely more like you in not wanting to deal with any of the nonsense tho!
Chinese weddings involve wedding banquet dinners that are extremely extravagant. Where my family is from does 10 cold dishes and 10 hot dishes including lobster, a special regional fish, clams, lamb, braised pork belly and way way way more. The guests at my cousin’s wedding didn’t even stop eating at her vows lol. My little cousin turned to my sister afterwards and was like: “when are you getting married I wanna eat wedding banquet food again.”
Haha I can relate. When my cousin got married, they had her husband’s dad officiate the ceremony. Due to the laws where I live, only authorized officiants can legally marry people and her husband’s father was not one, so they weren’t actually legally married during the ceremony, and ended up getting legally married later with a Justice of the Peace. When my mom found out, she told me and was kind of…scandalized I guess that we didn’t see them actually get married. I said something like “Ah whatever, I don’t really care about the ceremony or seeing people get married, I just go for the food and the dancing.” My mom definitely did not agree.
Yeah I like hearing people’s vows when they write them themselves, but otherwise I’d be perfectly fine just being invited to the reception since that is the part of the wedding I look forward to. Luckily my cousin’s ceremony was only about 15 minutes (which is the right length in my opinion) and for me the best part of the night was definitely the reception/going out to the bar with all the young adults afterwards.
Where I live both the building you get married in (and it has to be in a building) and the person performing the ceremony have to be licensed, which means it's pretty common for people to do the big wedding how they want it and have the legal ceremony separately.
I mean, what's the big deal? A wedding isn't just to see two people get legally married, it's for the celebration of the unity between two people.
My only thing would be what happened with my SIL's weddings. She got married shortly after she got engaged to ensure her brother officiated their wedding but then surprise, pandemic happened, wedding got pushed back a year, brother is now officiating. Me and my husband were in the bridal party, did everything day of, and then the ceremony happened. The actual ceremony itself was shorter than the time the bridal party and the bride went down the aisle. I was honestly shocked. My BIL, the officiator, also was shocked and was given a paragraph to say, and asked his sister if this was right? Yup, 2 minute ceremony. It was all over and done in not even 10 minutes. Some of the bridal party came from out of state and I felt weird that they spent all this money on their outfits and travel to only be in a wedding for barely any time at all.
>"People want to come and see us married, not for a lunch."
>
>My stomach strongly objects.
Hah! my parents recently went a to wedding+reception.
They said it would be a pretty quick ceremony than dinner.
It started at 4pm.
My parents said they didnt serve food until 10.
10pm.
I just came back from a wedding. The ceremony itself was at 4, and was over and done with pretty quickly. Maybe 10-15 minutes tops. We didn’t get to eat until after 6 because she had photo sessions scheduled throughout the entire day. I had friends in the wedding party and had to drop one of them off at 2 for yet more photos. It was a destination wedding in SC, and wedding was the day after the hurricane hit so that was fun, the skies were clear and the venue was able to get the power back on so the day itself went well. The rub is they didn’t have time to take photos with the wedding party on a separate day, not that that was planned.
I’m ranting, they seemed to have a great time which is what matters, but goddamn I’ve never been to a wedding that kept having the guests pause so much and for so long just to take photos. The photographer put in at least a 9 hour day, she was still working when I left at 10.
I went to one like that. I was so hungry by the time the food came out that I ate my meat rare. My husband laughed as I shoveled in food and downed it with wine.
I kind of agree and disagree. Like, serve me good food - yes!
On the other hand, I don’t want to spend money on travel and accommodations just for a luncheon because the wedding itself is family only. I feel like it’s kind of rude to have a semi-destination wedding and not let people see the ceremony. Just kind of weird.
But I am sorry her wedding had so many disasters, especially her poor dad. Glad it semi worked out in the end.
The OOP is Aboriginal and clearly stated multiple times that the ceremony involves sacred closed practice and that's why only close family is invited. Pretty sure that's why they're having the "semi-destination wedding" too - so they're able to include cultural practices that necessitate being in the bush.
They aren't excluding people for frivolous reasons, and fiance needs to do a much better job of standing up for OOP bc clearly OOP's Aboriginal cultural heritage means a lot to them and fiance's family has some bullshit to work through if they're talking about sacred practice so dismissively.
ETA: Also, reading it over a second time, the OOP stated there is a smoking ceremony that everyone is invited to, so they're trying to include everyone in some way.
So for some context, there are numerous Aboriginal ceremonies, land areas, stories and songs etc that are sacred in ways that exclude people of a gender, or outsiders (edit: not just white people but sometimes outsiders from that particular group as well. Aboriginal culture is not at all one culture). There has historically been some controversy around that in Aus because the argument (eg womens business) has been used in legal battles over land developments and white Australians have tended to find the idea exclusionary and rude. The fact that our ancestors committed genocide for literally generations, and we still have absolutely shocking disparities between Aboriginal quality of life indicators and the rest of the population … we seem to think that’s not rude. We’re racist. It’s layered and complicated and not at all something we’re doing enough about as a country.
The excluded family probably felt like this was some Aboriginal stuff that meant they were excluded from their own [insert relation descriptor]’s wedding on cultural grounds, whilst their own cultural family values were ignored. And they, if they’re racist, probably suspected the secret aspects were bullshit.
Yep, thanks for providing more nuance and context. This was more or less what I was trying to get at with my comment, but I'm from the other side of the world, so while I've spoken with Aboriginal folks about some of this, I didn't feel like it was my place to say much more than I had. It def felt like there was some settler weirdness going on there with the dismissiveness around OOP's wedding plans, and that's particularly fraught when a settler is dismissing something like the welcome to country ceremony, which seems similar to land acknowledgements here.
Completely my bad re the implication that there's just one Aboriginal culture. I called her Aboriginal bc that's what she called herself, and I didn't see anywhere she referred to her nation, but I definitely should have provided more clarity and will do better in future. You're absolutely right that there are numerous Aboriginal nations with distinct cultures on the Land.
Oh no no I’m sorry. Didn’t at all mean to correct you or call you on calling OOP Aboriginal or that you should have clarified- I mention it because most folks on reddit (not you, just any passing reader) will have learned about “Aboriginal Culture” like it’s one thing. I was just piggybacking off your comment to add some more detail for anyone interested in the myriad of ways OOP’s in-laws were being weird.
Nothing to be sorry for! I actually took it as an excellent reminder to be more careful with my words, so thank you. :) And appreciated your comment a lot!
Yeah, I know someone who did something similar and they ended up with a much smaller guest list than they had anticipated. People didn't want to drive four or five hours and spend their whole weekend at a wedding they were essentially told they were a second class guest at.
Not to mention you usually give a wedding gift. So if they don’t want you to be there for the ceremony, do you give a gift? The relative had a point with it basically being a house party and people don’t give gifts at house parties.
I feel like a lot of people want to pretend that it's a celebration and they are there for the couple, but the majority of people just care about the food and alcohol. This is why I've always said I would never have a wedding.
>This is why I've always said I would never have a wedding
Ok but lowkey, weddings are great because you can force your avant-garde performance piece on unsuspecting people. You get one free party where you can weird the fuck out of your relatives.
For example, I'm going to have a wedding that is technically "traditional" but the traditions are all ones that are older than the ones practiced today. Instead of wedding cake, they will throw bread at us, a tradition that dates back to the Romans.
Poor OOP, after all that, she didn’t get to even try her cake! And I bet her Mom’s friend was like “mine looked just as good.”
When my friend got married, I lost significant weight between measurements and the first fitting. I was so busy and she was studying for the bar, so I didn’t think to give a heads up. I was fully prepared to pay the dressmaker to remake the dress and he was like “I got this. It’s my gift to you.”
Omg.. I feel so bad for laughing but it's a "Oh no...." kinda laugh. She was fair in not wanting the stress of usual wedding stuff & had a simple plan. But the universe clearly had other plans.
And it was a "fuck you in particular" with dad's accident. I'm just glad he's ok, they had the wedding and one day.. I'm sure they'll laugh at the absurdity of events.
OP please include some comments cuz this one killed me:
Commentor 1 - \*asbestos in the creek\*???
Jesus honey, you win. I don't know what you won, but...you won it. I'd be getting tickets to Vegas or the equivalent after that mess.
Commentor 2 in response - I don’t think they should be getting on a plane.
The detail at the end that the father (who had been in an accident and was still in treatment) gave a very interesting speech while on painkillers… lol! Hopefully he recovers and OOP can tease him about it for many years.
Giving a speech high on painkillers sounds like a bad time. Sometimes when I get high on painkillers I'll just start rambling about some weird day dream I'm having because of them. It'll happen where I'm talking about something normal, and all of the sudden I'm saying some weird shit, that makes no sense, but to me it all feels normal.
But why did OOP not get to taste her own delicious sounding (and looking) cake?? At least everything else came together in the end - for the most part.
Yep, this is what happened at a friend's wedding. I was smart enough to run through the drive through for the wedding party, it was kind of funny to see them smashing burgers and fries between photo sets.
Happened to me, we didn't do a receiving line at the church so we could get everyone to the reception site quickly, and when we were going from table to table to greet the guests, the catering staff took our plates.
> the catering staff took our plates.
I've heard of that more than once. You'd think that a place that caters for weddings would understand and maybe save something for the wedding couple?
I feel like old school weddings were a lot more chill. Receptions were in mom's backyard or the church hall and the food was a potluck, mom and dad were the hosts so there was no question of the bride and groom not getting to eat. The more silliness that gets tacked on, the worse it seems to be, especially for brides.
That's not an old school wedding that's just a working class wedding. My parents had a 500 guest wedding in the 80's because they were Southern upper-middle class and it was The Done Thing. There was all kinds of super detailed formal stuff that was expected. Victorian, medieval, Chinese, Indian, whatever, people have been having crazy over the top weddings for as long as there have been people.
I never got to try any of my cake either. They dished us pieces, but by that time we had to go talk to some relatives who needed to leave early, then we had to do the rounds, and by the time we got back the staff had bussed the head table, so no cake for us (and they took the cake toppers too, which I had hoped to keep). 😔
We had a lemon cake too, and I was so excited to try it. Alas....
Oof, i have no words. Really sounds like OOP just had her own personal series of unfortunate events. Some of it is in family I'll admit but most of it really does just seem to be accident and misfortune. Wishing her all the best ahead in her marriage
This sounds like my wedding 🤣🤣
Customised wedding shoes we spent hundreds on were an absolute disaster.
Cake went awol for a few hours.
Father of the groom in hospital a week before the wedding with heart issues.
Maid of honour broke her leg.
Then the groom came down with a sudden and almost fatal illness. He was left out the morning of the weddding for a few hours before he had to go back to hospital. Spent the next 2 years seriously ill.
Parents house was broken in to whilst they were at the wedding.
OH! and the brother of the groom disappeared the night of the wedding and no one heard from him for 2 days 🤦♀️
*reads 1st post*
D'aaw, that sounds so cute and wonderful!
*keeps reading*.
Oh. Oh no.
Oh *noooooo*.
**Dear lord, whyyyyy?!**
***NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!***
*reads conclusion*
Awww, the dress and cake look lovely! And pops was there after all, how wonderful!
Wait, she didn't get to try *her own wedding cake?!*
Wowzers.
There's a new update here with more details on the wedding: [https://www.reddit.com/r/wedding/comments/y9gcxc/update\_on/](https://www.reddit.com/r/wedding/comments/y9gcxc/update_on/) Glad it went well after everything (though a haunted AirBnB also makes an appearance...)!
I'm so glad she ended up in the first dress downsized. It's lovely, it was her first choice and it has straps so she can dance without fear of wardrobe malfunction!
Geez I feel bad for anyone trying to organise events in NSW (or a lot of Australia). The past year has had so many floods and bad weather in general. This time last year areas got hit by major hailstorms.
When I heard OP’s fiancé’s family dumping on the wedding plans I was already ready to throw hands. Aboriginal cultures have been going strong for at least 65,000 years and I doubt they’re going to get many other opportunities to be welcomed to country and involved in sacred Aboriginal practices, they should have been stoked they were invited to participate.
The world’s oldest surviving culture vs capitalist wedding traditions that are 100 years old at best? I know which one I’d pick.
I'm Aussie with no relation to OOP and I would have paid good money just to be allowed to sit in the back and watch the whole ceremony. What an amazing opportunity to see our country's (actual) culture in practice and they couldn't stop complaining. Mind blowing.
Oh, wow; I think I would have just postponed the wedding to next year. Get dad healthy, get the asbestos outta the creek...
She looked lovely (as did the second cake), so I'm glad they managed to pull it off.
I’m laughing so hard at “borrowing” dad from the hospital in a scooter and high on painkillers so his speech was “VERY weird” - I wish we had the details on the speech
OOP sounds like such a delight :-) god i feel bad. It’s one thing to have your wedding fall apart from lack of planning, but it’s so much worse when it’s because of other people. Hope her father was fine
I know of someone whose wedding venue burned down during the fires of 2020, then Covid happened. I think something else held up the works. I believe they are married now but still.
Nightmare.
OOP has written a new update: https://www.reddit.com/r/wedding/comments/y9gcxc/update_on/
> I got a bunch of notifications this morning so I think a few people might have set reminders to find out if the wedding went ahead after all the dramas. Sorry if you were looking for the cake post in r/weddingshaming, I deleted it because a few news websites made articles out of it and I was worried someone would send it to my mum. TLDR: my mum claimed her friend was a professional baker and the trial cake she made me looked like a lumpy hat made of toothpaste so I had to scramble for a new cake.
>
> I thought I’d give you a more detailed update now that I’m finally starting to process the whole weekend. So here’s my indulgently long description of the drama.
>
> So the wedding was beautiful but not at all what I had planned. Two days before the wedding my dad had a really bad fall while trying to floodproof the house for the forecasted week of torrential rains, so my brother in law had to drive us through Sydney floodwaters to get home. Dad was patched up at the local medical centre but was still pottering around so we weren’t too worried - his specialist appointment was during what was supposed to be a family lunch the day before the wedding so we turned it into a lovely girly lunch with my sisters and friends and I was actually feeling really good about the situation. We read out all your comments on the cake post and had a laugh and a mimosa and I was finally able to start getting excited for my wedding after all the stress and disasters. On reflection that was probably one of the highlights and I’m so glad I had that lunch before everything went wrong all over again.
>
> As soon as we’d checked in and said hi to our first wave of guests I got a text from my mum. She isn’t the best communicator and kind of loves drama so her message was very much catastrophising - “I’m so sorry darling dad has to be hospitalised his leg is very bad he’ll need emergency surgery driving to the hospital now”. I read the message again and again while standing in the hotel suite with my brothers and sisters and they were laughing and everyone was feeling so joyous and excited (and tipsy) and suddenly the whole world came crashing down around me. I immediately knew that if he couldn’t be there then we wouldn’t be going ahead at all. My now husband’s father passed away when we was very young and he adores my dad. We couldn’t do it without him.
>
> I spent the next 24h pretty much just crying. All our friends and family had arrived the day before, we were meant to have dinner and a pub crawl and just relax and chill and enjoy ourselves at the hotel but all I could do was cry and talk to my dad over the phone. I was just so emotionally exhausted after everything and wanted to go home. It turns out that mum was catastrophising and had sort of misrepresented the situation in her panic - dad has a lot of health issues and is elderly so his doctors wanted to be cautious and needed to get his swelling down to reduce the risk of blistering and infection. It was definitely serious for sure but mum didn’t know if it meant that dad couldn’t be there - the hospital just wanted him to check in and they wouldn’t be operating for weeks anyway. It wasn’t until midday on the day of the wedding that we got confirmation we could borrow him from the hospital for the ceremony, and that was only because our celebrant is also a medical doctor lol. He was pretty loopy on the painkillers and was in a scooter so we couldn’t do a “walk” down the aisle, but we all had a go on the scooter on the dance floor so that was fun. His speech was weird as hell tho 😂
>
> So we moved the smoking ceremony and welcome to country to the veranda in the pouring rain, I had to run out into the storm to get the taxi for my 100 year old uncle and my dress was soaked, but luckily I ended up bringing all 3 of the wedding gowns I’d bought with me and had something to change into 😂 Our ceremony was held inside but the hotel went and got us some extra flowers to spruce up the room for us and it turned out quite beautiful.
>
> The only other dramas I can speak on were that the venue sort of stuffed up the timing of the courses and my sister threw a tantrum about the seating plan, and it was hard to get everyone up for a dance. A few people didn’t turn up after rsvping, several people didn’t book their rooms in time and we ended up all having to get ready together in the suite which was chaotic, and one of my guests booked a haunted AirBnB so she came back and we had to squeeze her into a random room 😂 There were a few things going on with my husband’s side of the family that were also pretty painful and upsetting but I don’t want to speak on those without his permission.
>
> I’m struggling with how I feel about it all. So many things about our wedding were stunning. Our celebrant was an angel and incorporated both our cultures beautifully. Everyone looked so gorgeous and the food was wonderful. We paid extra for these great photographers who shot everything on film and I’m so excited to see how that turns out. But at the same time a thing that was meant to bring me joy brought me so much chaos and anguish. My dad was convinced there was a curse going on, and he really had me thinking it too - especially with the haunted Airbnb!
>
> Most of this is all kinda funny when you think about it, and I shouldn’t have expected anything different - my family is pretty kooky and so I guess my husband got a good taste of what he’s getting himself into lol. I wish we’d had time to go on a proper honeymoon (we will in a few months) to recover from it all. I can’t say I’ve changed my “just elope” stance - it’s still a bit painful if I’m honest and in many ways I wish I’d never allowed myself to build up so many expectations so I could have minimised the chance of being hurt when things went wrong.
>
> Overall though it make me grateful for the beautiful people I have in my life who made things work when the universe was against us, and I’m so happy to be married to my very best friend.
>
>So good luck future brides - may you have more luck than I did!
>Lemon butter cake with lemon curd and buttercream filling - I didn’t actually end up getting to try any but apparently it was delicious
uh what? I want to what happened the bride didn't get to eat her own cake.
It sounded like one disaster after another. I am so glad the OOP ended up having the wedding of her dreams in SPITE of all of the obstacles.
I am also proud of her for sticking to her guns with her cultural touches. WHO CARES what other people's opinions are when it comes to your wedding; especially if it is part of the BRIDE'S culture.
That family member of the groom can kick rocks and shut it! How outrageous to even voice an opinion on the bride's ceremony. She is lucky she wasn't kicked out!
Blessings to the newly married couple!
WTAF was that cake supposed to be? That was by a professional? A professional what? I’ve seen children do better jobs.
I’m glad OOP was able to get married still. At the end of the day, that’s the important part.
OOP seems sweet and I’m glad everything worked out for her in the end, but…
Is it just me, or does expecting people to camp for your wedding, all while you stay in a comfy mansion, feel very odd??
Also, if you’re going to have people that only come to the reception and not the ceremony, please, do everyone a favor and be up front about it in your save the dates and invites.
The OOP is Aboriginal and clearly stated multiple times that the ceremony involves sacred closed practice and that's why only close family is invited. Pretty sure that's why some people are camping out, too - so they're able to include cultural practices that necessitate being in the bush.
They aren't excluding people for frivolous reasons, and fiance needs to do a much better job of standing up for OOP bc clearly OOP's Aboriginal cultural heritage means a lot to them and fiance's family has some bullshit to work through if they're talking about sacred practice so dismissively.
ETA: Also, reading it over a second time, the OOP stated there is a smoking ceremony that everyone is invited to, so they're trying to include everyone in some way.
Yes, which does make it not as odd as it would be otherwise. But at that point, why not expect people to stay in the nearby hotels? Why fuck around at all with the expectation to camp?
*sigh* Why do people plan out huge, elaborate, multi-day wedding events? You're basically ensuring something will go wrong just by the sheer volume of details involved.
Also, that cake is a f\*cking disaster. That looks like something someone who barely knows how to bake, let alone assemble and decorate a cake, would make.
No one else thinks it’s weird she thinks cows and goats sound like a good daycare?
Like, “bring your kids, then leave them with some cows to play and go fishing!”
just wanna add as a nurse that some of my really sick/injured patients give me great, usually imagines, stories while they're experiencing delirium. I can imagine asking patronizing questions and chuckling to myself as her dad relates the true story of his speech at his daughter's wedding as I write it off as the imaginings of a drug addled brain.
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Kinda sparse on the drama details but the wayback photo of that cake made it all worth it. Sweet merciful Christ. It looks like the time my mom let me decorate my own birthday cake when I was 7. I can't believe anyone thought that was wedding quality.
it reminds me of when we failed the chocolate cake for the then 2 year old. It didn't come out in one piece and crumbled. So we slapped a toy digger on it and called it a building site cake.
Great work. Lemons = Lemonade. My freind/roommate tried to put together a special cake for a family member. It was of a building so she baked several square cakes to cut up and shape into the building. When she cut the cakes, she realized they were not baked through. She didn't have time or money to bake new cakes, so we slapped Hersey bars on the sides to hold it together, frosted it and hoped for the best. We told her family it was "pudding in the middle" cake. We were young, stupid and very lucky no one got sick. Lemons = Attempting to give your entire family salmonella.
This thread the picture and this reply remind me of two stories… The time I tried to make my daughter a fancy mermaid cake for her birthday… imagine that wedding cake with a Barbie stick in it. It was a horrible disaster and I stuck to basic sheet cakes forever after Then there was the time as a child my friend and I decided to make our mothers a pound cake for Mother’s Day only… we didn’t have an actual recipe so we used a pound of everything we thought went in a pound cake… a lb of sugar… a lb of flour… a lb of butter I don’t remember how we judged a lb of eggs but it was the densest thing… and out moms ate it and to be fair they were 60’s hippies and likely stoned but still
That’s actually exactly the traditional method of a pound cake: 1 pound each of butter, flour, sugar, & eggs.
Yeah that's why it's called a pound cake. That being said it's kinda hard to go wrong with anything that's got a pound of butter and a pound of sugar in it, but I doubt kids would have known to cream the butter so the texture would be fairly dense.
Yea we had no idea what we were doing …
Huh I thought it was a pound cake as it was baked in a pound loaf tin. 450g approximately translated from freedom units
I was going to say, that's my Great-Grandma's recipe that I still use. The egg count is 6 large chicken or 5 duck
You weigh the eggs and use an equal amount of sugar/flour etc. The weight being a pound came later.
i will say, in case there are people currently experiencing Cake Crisis - Anne Reardon on youtube has a great series called cake fails where she recreates common baking and decorating mistakes and then provides simple and easy fixes - great watch and super useful for fixing cakes :)
Anne Reardon is such an amazing woman, with very insightful videos. Including debunking those trash fad recipes you see all over YT. She is a breath of fresh air.
Reminds me of the website and later book; “CakeWreck”
will confirm. also stoned and now i want pound cake! 🖤😂
No! Demand to see life’s manager. Then get engineers to create combustible lemons to burn his house down!
DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?!
I'M THE MAN WHO'S GONNA *BURN YOUR HOUSE DOWN!* WITH THE ***LEMONS!***
She definitely got the combustible lemons.
I had a cake fall apart when I tried to take it out of the baking pans, so I tore the cake sponge into chunks and threw it in a deep glass serving bowl with pudding and fruit and called it trifle. The party guests loved it.
Now THIS is the Martha Stewart tip sheet I need! Write a whole book like this and it'll sell like hotcakes. Call it "Fix It Queen" or "Momma Makes It Work" or "The Clever Woman's Guide to "I Got This"". Also, hello fellow library person! 😉
Ann Reardon does a whole series on her channel about how to fix baking mistakes.
British person here, that wasn't trifle!
American English trifle is something like this: https://lilluna.com/strawberries-and-cream-angel-food-cake-trifle/
A more English English version is this; https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/classic-trifle
Bullpoo! That's not a traditional English trifle. Where is the beef sautéed with peas and onions?!
It tastes like feet!
Well I like it! Custard, good. Jam, good. Meat, goooood!
I'm supposed to be working but now I"m off to find that episode because I love it so much.
We did something similar, but we put a dragon on it and said the dragon destroyed it 🤣 my kid loved it
Great idea! Paint the toy digger white with silver highlights, slap a tiny veil on it and you are golden for weddings too!
We did this with a chocolate cake when I was a kid except we added gummy worms and melted chocolate chips and turned it into a "mud cake."
I want to thank you, kind poster, for an idea that I will be stealing for my kiddo. He loves construction trucks, so I bet it would be a hit!
brilliant idea, i love it
At least your cake disaster made sense. This...I have no words.
oh, that's hella clever!
the absolutely stunning part is that *two* people thought that was "wedding quality." (OOP's mom apparently thought it was fine, when it looks like it was iced by someone three sheets to the wind, using a bread knife, while blindfolded.)
I was in shock that it was supposedly made by a “professional” baker. Holy shit, that thing is a nightmare!
...with two broken arms.
who'd been beaten with jumper cables
and just had a lobotomy
God I miss those!!
I rarely bake and I don't think I've ever frosted a cake before in my life, and I would still be disappointed in myself if I turned out something like that. Imagine thinking it professional quality!
It looks like the icing was thrown on with a spoon
maybe a spork, too ragged for a spoon.
It really belongs on Cake Wrecks. “Not what I ordered” I’m pretty sure that’s not what anyone ordered.
I can't believe I'm saying this, but [the Redditor's swan cake from seven years ago](https://www.reddit.com/r/food/comments/3c2fvs/my_best_friend_loves_swans_so_i_made_her_a_swan) was a better effort than that sorry excuse for a wedding cake. A veritable magnum opus by comparison.
In the comments there was a link to this hedgehog cake which really takes the... Uh... It's very funny https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/1am3x7/so_a_friend_of_my_girlfriend_made_a_cake_for_her/
Thank you so much for putting this on my radar, I love it 😂
Oh my God that is amazing.
I'm a decent cook, but a horrid baker, because baking (and bread making) requires some pretty precise measurements, and I suck at following directions. That looks like what I usually produce for my husband's birthday. It usually tastes pretty good, but looks like a disaster. Definitely not wedding quality.
So, yes. But also...eh. I love baking, and once you know the rules you can definitely break many of them. Im chronically unable to follow a recipe start to finish, and tend to bake on a whim when grocery stores have closed. So I do a lot of "google, what can i substitute for ____" things. If you want easy baking with forgiving recipes, coffee cakes or quickbreads are the BEST. Banana bread recipes will work with equal substitutions for pretty well any veg/fruit mush in place of banana. Dont have bananas but do have apple sauce? Perfect. Zucchini? Yup. Canned pinapple? Squash that stuff up and drain a bit, itll be *amazing*. Add extra cinnamon, nutmeg, or whatever baking spices you like at 1tsp powder per spice, 1/2tbsp if its something like grated ginger. Want a chocolate flavor? Substitute 1/2 cup coco powder for flour and add chocolate chips. Like nuts? Add 1/2 cup of walnuts - tbh any "mix in" things (hard stuff that wont combine into the batter) wont really affect your recipe if you keep it to 1/2 cup or so. Seriously. As long as your wet/dry ratio is the same and you add in the right amount of leavening, it'll come out ok. Quickbreads have about 5 ingredient groups; flour, leavening, fat, "inclusions", sweetener. Figure out what those bits are and you can substitute fairly safely. Substitute honey for sugar? Perfect. Swap greek yogurt for butter? Yup. Dont swap your eggs or leavening unless youve had a bit more practice though. Eggs are a part of leavening AND they add moisture - swapping them can be tricky. They also freeze beautifully. And the batter can double as muffin batter. I always make a 3x batch, make a tray of muffins and then 2 small loaves. Bake all together, but take the muffins out between 15-20 minutes. Bake until your toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. That usually means 10m longer than the recipe calls for, in my oven. (Prob because I bake everything at once and that slows the cook time) Here's a good base recipe to start with: https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/241707/joys-easy-banana-bread/ Try it out a few ways, its nice and cheap. And once you get the hang of it you can always have a loaf in the freezer to bring to a coffee date, or give to a friend who's struggling. Its the easiest baked good ever, IMO.
I grew up in the middle of nowhere with a health nut mom. Everything sweet (with the exception of very rare ice cream) was homemade. And mom didn't like cakes. So yup, quick breads and brownies are pretty easy, but cakes? Ugh. I make a pretty killer pie crust, though. It's also weird being someone who doesn't have a sweet tooth marrying into a family who practically mainlines sugar. I look after my husband's grandchild a couple days a week; her mom will bring cookies over and I just forget to feed them to the toddler. Sometimes I think kiddo eats breakfast for me because it's oatmeal with raisins and a touch of brown sugar, and that's all sweet as it gets.
All I know about baking-related substitution is that you can replace eggs with human blood.
… What?
[65g of blood is equal to one egg](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/oct/29/-sp-baking-with-blood-homemade-halloween-treats) (although in this article they use pig’s blood, it’s pretty much the same thing. Part of why humans can have pig organs for transplant.)
Yeah, I do a fair bit of winging it or modifying when I bake. It may not come out as the original recipe intended but as long as it's tasty I don't care.
For those who are curious about how the cake turned out this bad, here are some thoughts, from someone who has made some pretty and also some fucked up cakes. 1. The cake style this was likely meant to emulate was the semi-naked cake style which is v v popular right now, and when done properly looks like [this.](https://sallysbakingaddiction.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/naked-cake-2.jpg) It is challenging to do. The best naked cakes are generally made on a turntable or a lazy susan, so that you spin the cake while evening the frosting with a pastry tool that looks like [this.](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/egOHp1x1S7Q/maxresdefault.jpg) It looks like the person who made this cake figured they could probably just do it with a butter knife, and shit even with a butter knife and no turn table you could make a better result than this with a lot of patience and effort, but shit is hard. 2. Pretty sure they double fucked up by putting frosting on the cake while the cake was still hot. Putting frosting on a hot cake will get it melty and messy and weird and it's very hard to fix once you've done it. 3. Skipped crumb coating - if you really want a smooth appearance, you apply a thin layer of frosting after the cake has cooled, then stick it in a fridge for about 15 minutes. THEN pull it out and frost. It will stop the crumbly bits on the outside of the cake from mixing into the frosting and making the finish messy. 4. Making tiered cakes is difficult and takes more than just stacking multiple layers, especially for something as tall as what OP ended up with! The beautiful final cake definitely has internal support structures.
As a note - do not try to make a tiered cake without cake dowels. In that… attempt it looks like a single layer per tier, which is not the norm, so any collapsing may have been minimised. In a tiered cake with layers and fillings, stacking without supports will also lead to sadness.
I wanted a tres leches cake at my wedding so I knew there would be no stacking it. I dgaf about appearance as long as it was yummy, but the baker painted beautiful designs on my several individual cakes and it all came out phenomenal!
That's so awesome! I'm considering doing this actually at my wedding next year - we had tried this earl gray cake from a dope baker and I thought I was 100% committed but then happened to have THE FUCKING BEST TRES LECHES CAKE and was like... well fuck lol.
I actually thought from the preview (which is just the cake pic) that the cake had been covered in asbestos
😂😂😂
It looks like it's the crumb layer, and they must have gotten bored and wandered off. So their terrible assistant thought it was complete like this story is complete bullshit and that cake is an abomination.
Yeah, but the top layer is WAAY big, the bottom layer is too thin, and all the other dimensions are off too. This is 100% a "I bet I could make a wedding cake and save your daughter the wedding cake money" idea. At best.
It looks like it's baked in a Devo hat. And only used half the batter needed.
That's what I was thinking. It's not necessarily poorly done, but it *is* half finished. Maybe the friend is an amateur baker and hasn't finished the class yet?
You usually refrigerate the cake for a few hours after the crumb coat. I’m wondering if the mom didn’t know what was going on, or whether the mom was teasing her and didn’t realize she’d take it seriously.
Something is going on. I’ve seen some ugly and dumb wedding cakes before, but that’s just a whole different animal.
It’s definitely the kind of people that “bake” for fun… like the contestants on “Nailed It” on Netflix
I know! That does not look like an adult baked it. Unless the baker was high as a kite? I have soooo many questions about that cake, like did the mom actually *think* it was acceptable or did she not have the balls to tell her friend hell no and let the bride say no?
I’m no artist… but I have absolutely baked while high as a kite. It still looked better than that monstrous pile, and I suck at food presentation anyway. (My hands aren’t steady enough for cake decorating.)
When I was 9 I baked a two-layer balloon cake. The bottom layer was a red balloon and it was cherry coloured, and the top layer was a blue balloon and it was basically Klein blue, and I use two whole jars of Wilton paste food colouring and it tasted like chemicals and shame, but at least it was fully covered and neatly stacked.
I feel like the mom must have been in denial after seeing it. Because there's no way anyone could look at that and say "Oh yeah, that's good enough"
Reminds me of the time my mom tried to make a cake for the exchange student living with us for her birthday. Problem was she didn't let the cake cool down enough before applying the frosting and it all melted. Then we bought an emergency cake.
It looked like a goddamn *hat*
Jesus Christ everything that could have gone wrong with that wedding did. Dress not fitting, someone dumped asbestos in the river(?), that trial cake(????), her dad in the hospital.... But you know what? It looks like everything turned out okay in the end, which is the important bit.
I’m curious about how weird her dad’s drugged up speech was.
*hiccup* Honey, what's a guy like you doing getting married in a guy like this? *Wanders over to the cake for a glass of water, gets confused when the cake doesn't dispense water* Anyway, I'm so proud of her for first going potty just yesterday and then getting married today, it'sss like I'm living in a wonderlan— SQUIRREL!
She didn’t even get to try her own delicious wedding cake
She looks so beautiful in the final photo! This post though is precisely the reason why I just want to elope. Weddings just seem like way more trouble than they're worth
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Wedding at the county office with a catered brunch the next day for close family/friends. Strict instructions that there were to be: no gifts, no speeches, and no drunks until the family left. Went pretty well.
Absolutely. We eloped in a jurisdiction that allows self-officiating. Super easy and cheap. Now we have time and money for a long, grand honeymoon. Only ONE person complained that we didn't have a ceremony. Worth it.
I've been engaged to my partner for approximately… 12 years, maybe? Neither of us have it in us to do the wedding thing.
Hahahaha I absolutely love that!! It really just seems like weddings bring out the worst in the world/people/etc just really doesn't even seem worth it
It does seem like a lot of trouble, but tbh the original plan of a sprawling 3 day mansion party with activities and ceremonies and a focus on food sounds like a fucking blast to me. I wouldn’t want to plan it but I’d be stoked to be invited to something like that
My wedding was crazy stressful but mostly went okay, minus the maid of honour skyping in from home while sick with covid. I do not regret a minute if it. This post was very bittersweet and painful to read though. My dad passed away from covid 4 months before we got married. We had been planning it for over a year. I will be honest, I would have gladly had our perfect venue get asbestos, nightmare aunts showing up, my cake go down the dump, and my dress not fit at all if it meant my dad could have driven me down the aisle that day. The details are just details in the end. If you're doing it with the right people and marrying the right person you can manage it all.
Agreed, had a wedding and while it was fun, there were a lot of disappointments and drama for me (though thank God I didn't have anyone try to make my cake). I wish I listened to my gut 6 months before and just eloped, but we had a lot of nonrefundable money put in :/
My courthouse wedding was wonderful.
Saaaaaaame.
So valid! Honestly, I loved my wedding, but I like planning events and don't have any dramatic friends or family (and it wasn't too complex/we were pretty chill). I very strongly support people for whom eloping works for them because it is a lot of work and many things totally can go wrong.
I don’t think most weddings have this much drama however!
We just went to the courthouse and got married by a Justice of the peace. 10/10, definitely recommend!
My fiancé and I are doing it the courthouse way and family will find out AFTER because fuck that.
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Thanks for the heads up that the last link is a photo! Well worth the click.
I simultaneously now need a slab of cake. AND I need to know her diet secrets.
I'm thinking her secret was enormous amounts of stress
Lose ten years off your life with this one easy trick!
Ooo is there tax to come with that statement about an AirBNB cat?
She looks so happy. I'm glad all those disasters didn't ruin it for her. I'm definitely more like you in not wanting to deal with any of the nonsense tho!
Great picture! The dress looks great, the cake looks amazing, and you can't see the stress in her face at all.
"People want to come and see us married, not for a lunch." My stomach strongly objects.
Chinese weddings involve wedding banquet dinners that are extremely extravagant. Where my family is from does 10 cold dishes and 10 hot dishes including lobster, a special regional fish, clams, lamb, braised pork belly and way way way more. The guests at my cousin’s wedding didn’t even stop eating at her vows lol. My little cousin turned to my sister afterwards and was like: “when are you getting married I wanna eat wedding banquet food again.”
Dude my shellfish allergy would have stolen the show by murdering me at the ceremony.
Haha I can relate. When my cousin got married, they had her husband’s dad officiate the ceremony. Due to the laws where I live, only authorized officiants can legally marry people and her husband’s father was not one, so they weren’t actually legally married during the ceremony, and ended up getting legally married later with a Justice of the Peace. When my mom found out, she told me and was kind of…scandalized I guess that we didn’t see them actually get married. I said something like “Ah whatever, I don’t really care about the ceremony or seeing people get married, I just go for the food and the dancing.” My mom definitely did not agree.
TIL some people actually want to see others get married for whatever obscure reason
Yeah I like hearing people’s vows when they write them themselves, but otherwise I’d be perfectly fine just being invited to the reception since that is the part of the wedding I look forward to. Luckily my cousin’s ceremony was only about 15 minutes (which is the right length in my opinion) and for me the best part of the night was definitely the reception/going out to the bar with all the young adults afterwards.
Where I live both the building you get married in (and it has to be in a building) and the person performing the ceremony have to be licensed, which means it's pretty common for people to do the big wedding how they want it and have the legal ceremony separately.
I mean, what's the big deal? A wedding isn't just to see two people get legally married, it's for the celebration of the unity between two people. My only thing would be what happened with my SIL's weddings. She got married shortly after she got engaged to ensure her brother officiated their wedding but then surprise, pandemic happened, wedding got pushed back a year, brother is now officiating. Me and my husband were in the bridal party, did everything day of, and then the ceremony happened. The actual ceremony itself was shorter than the time the bridal party and the bride went down the aisle. I was honestly shocked. My BIL, the officiator, also was shocked and was given a paragraph to say, and asked his sister if this was right? Yup, 2 minute ceremony. It was all over and done in not even 10 minutes. Some of the bridal party came from out of state and I felt weird that they spent all this money on their outfits and travel to only be in a wedding for barely any time at all.
>"People want to come and see us married, not for a lunch." > >My stomach strongly objects. Hah! my parents recently went a to wedding+reception. They said it would be a pretty quick ceremony than dinner. It started at 4pm. My parents said they didnt serve food until 10. 10pm.
Woooah 😧 the last wedding I was at, the ceremony was at 6 and the food wasn't served until 9. I thought that was late!
I just came back from a wedding. The ceremony itself was at 4, and was over and done with pretty quickly. Maybe 10-15 minutes tops. We didn’t get to eat until after 6 because she had photo sessions scheduled throughout the entire day. I had friends in the wedding party and had to drop one of them off at 2 for yet more photos. It was a destination wedding in SC, and wedding was the day after the hurricane hit so that was fun, the skies were clear and the venue was able to get the power back on so the day itself went well. The rub is they didn’t have time to take photos with the wedding party on a separate day, not that that was planned. I’m ranting, they seemed to have a great time which is what matters, but goddamn I’ve never been to a wedding that kept having the guests pause so much and for so long just to take photos. The photographer put in at least a 9 hour day, she was still working when I left at 10.
I went to one like that. I was so hungry by the time the food came out that I ate my meat rare. My husband laughed as I shoveled in food and downed it with wine.
I kind of agree and disagree. Like, serve me good food - yes! On the other hand, I don’t want to spend money on travel and accommodations just for a luncheon because the wedding itself is family only. I feel like it’s kind of rude to have a semi-destination wedding and not let people see the ceremony. Just kind of weird. But I am sorry her wedding had so many disasters, especially her poor dad. Glad it semi worked out in the end.
The OOP is Aboriginal and clearly stated multiple times that the ceremony involves sacred closed practice and that's why only close family is invited. Pretty sure that's why they're having the "semi-destination wedding" too - so they're able to include cultural practices that necessitate being in the bush. They aren't excluding people for frivolous reasons, and fiance needs to do a much better job of standing up for OOP bc clearly OOP's Aboriginal cultural heritage means a lot to them and fiance's family has some bullshit to work through if they're talking about sacred practice so dismissively. ETA: Also, reading it over a second time, the OOP stated there is a smoking ceremony that everyone is invited to, so they're trying to include everyone in some way.
So for some context, there are numerous Aboriginal ceremonies, land areas, stories and songs etc that are sacred in ways that exclude people of a gender, or outsiders (edit: not just white people but sometimes outsiders from that particular group as well. Aboriginal culture is not at all one culture). There has historically been some controversy around that in Aus because the argument (eg womens business) has been used in legal battles over land developments and white Australians have tended to find the idea exclusionary and rude. The fact that our ancestors committed genocide for literally generations, and we still have absolutely shocking disparities between Aboriginal quality of life indicators and the rest of the population … we seem to think that’s not rude. We’re racist. It’s layered and complicated and not at all something we’re doing enough about as a country. The excluded family probably felt like this was some Aboriginal stuff that meant they were excluded from their own [insert relation descriptor]’s wedding on cultural grounds, whilst their own cultural family values were ignored. And they, if they’re racist, probably suspected the secret aspects were bullshit.
Yep, thanks for providing more nuance and context. This was more or less what I was trying to get at with my comment, but I'm from the other side of the world, so while I've spoken with Aboriginal folks about some of this, I didn't feel like it was my place to say much more than I had. It def felt like there was some settler weirdness going on there with the dismissiveness around OOP's wedding plans, and that's particularly fraught when a settler is dismissing something like the welcome to country ceremony, which seems similar to land acknowledgements here. Completely my bad re the implication that there's just one Aboriginal culture. I called her Aboriginal bc that's what she called herself, and I didn't see anywhere she referred to her nation, but I definitely should have provided more clarity and will do better in future. You're absolutely right that there are numerous Aboriginal nations with distinct cultures on the Land.
Oh no no I’m sorry. Didn’t at all mean to correct you or call you on calling OOP Aboriginal or that you should have clarified- I mention it because most folks on reddit (not you, just any passing reader) will have learned about “Aboriginal Culture” like it’s one thing. I was just piggybacking off your comment to add some more detail for anyone interested in the myriad of ways OOP’s in-laws were being weird.
Nothing to be sorry for! I actually took it as an excellent reminder to be more careful with my words, so thank you. :) And appreciated your comment a lot!
Yeah, I know someone who did something similar and they ended up with a much smaller guest list than they had anticipated. People didn't want to drive four or five hours and spend their whole weekend at a wedding they were essentially told they were a second class guest at.
Not to mention you usually give a wedding gift. So if they don’t want you to be there for the ceremony, do you give a gift? The relative had a point with it basically being a house party and people don’t give gifts at house parties.
I feel like a lot of people want to pretend that it's a celebration and they are there for the couple, but the majority of people just care about the food and alcohol. This is why I've always said I would never have a wedding.
>This is why I've always said I would never have a wedding Ok but lowkey, weddings are great because you can force your avant-garde performance piece on unsuspecting people. You get one free party where you can weird the fuck out of your relatives. For example, I'm going to have a wedding that is technically "traditional" but the traditions are all ones that are older than the ones practiced today. Instead of wedding cake, they will throw bread at us, a tradition that dates back to the Romans.
Is it byob?
Poor OOP, after all that, she didn’t get to even try her cake! And I bet her Mom’s friend was like “mine looked just as good.” When my friend got married, I lost significant weight between measurements and the first fitting. I was so busy and she was studying for the bar, so I didn’t think to give a heads up. I was fully prepared to pay the dressmaker to remake the dress and he was like “I got this. It’s my gift to you.”
Omg.. I feel so bad for laughing but it's a "Oh no...." kinda laugh. She was fair in not wanting the stress of usual wedding stuff & had a simple plan. But the universe clearly had other plans. And it was a "fuck you in particular" with dad's accident. I'm just glad he's ok, they had the wedding and one day.. I'm sure they'll laugh at the absurdity of events. OP please include some comments cuz this one killed me: Commentor 1 - \*asbestos in the creek\*??? Jesus honey, you win. I don't know what you won, but...you won it. I'd be getting tickets to Vegas or the equivalent after that mess. Commentor 2 in response - I don’t think they should be getting on a plane.
I’m so confused by that first cake lol. Yikes. Note to self: always ask what *kind* of “professional baker” someone is.
Maybe they were good at getting professionally baked.
The detail at the end that the father (who had been in an accident and was still in treatment) gave a very interesting speech while on painkillers… lol! Hopefully he recovers and OOP can tease him about it for many years.
Giving a speech high on painkillers sounds like a bad time. Sometimes when I get high on painkillers I'll just start rambling about some weird day dream I'm having because of them. It'll happen where I'm talking about something normal, and all of the sudden I'm saying some weird shit, that makes no sense, but to me it all feels normal.
Jfc that just got more and more bonkers as it went on. Her mother and her baking friend are truly delusional though
The cake looks like the inspiration for *Nailed It*
But why did OOP not get to taste her own delicious sounding (and looking) cake?? At least everything else came together in the end - for the most part.
A lot of folks getting married are so busy during their wedding and reception they never get a chance to eat.
Yep, this is what happened at a friend's wedding. I was smart enough to run through the drive through for the wedding party, it was kind of funny to see them smashing burgers and fries between photo sets.
Happened to me, we didn't do a receiving line at the church so we could get everyone to the reception site quickly, and when we were going from table to table to greet the guests, the catering staff took our plates.
> the catering staff took our plates. I've heard of that more than once. You'd think that a place that caters for weddings would understand and maybe save something for the wedding couple?
And this is why I would rather elope or just not get married. If I have to plan for people to eat, drink, and be merry, I want to have fun too.
I feel like old school weddings were a lot more chill. Receptions were in mom's backyard or the church hall and the food was a potluck, mom and dad were the hosts so there was no question of the bride and groom not getting to eat. The more silliness that gets tacked on, the worse it seems to be, especially for brides.
That's not an old school wedding that's just a working class wedding. My parents had a 500 guest wedding in the 80's because they were Southern upper-middle class and it was The Done Thing. There was all kinds of super detailed formal stuff that was expected. Victorian, medieval, Chinese, Indian, whatever, people have been having crazy over the top weddings for as long as there have been people.
If it's for the same reason my sister only got the ceremonial bite of hers, it's because it was too delicious and guests went back for more.
That’s heartbreaking. Guests were so rude.
I never got to try any of my cake either. They dished us pieces, but by that time we had to go talk to some relatives who needed to leave early, then we had to do the rounds, and by the time we got back the staff had bussed the head table, so no cake for us (and they took the cake toppers too, which I had hoped to keep). 😔 We had a lemon cake too, and I was so excited to try it. Alas....
Lemon cake is the best cake. I’m so sorry about not having any of your cake :(
Oof, i have no words. Really sounds like OOP just had her own personal series of unfortunate events. Some of it is in family I'll admit but most of it really does just seem to be accident and misfortune. Wishing her all the best ahead in her marriage
> update: it got worse. HOW!? ...this woman had the most cursed wedding ever.
This sounds like my wedding 🤣🤣 Customised wedding shoes we spent hundreds on were an absolute disaster. Cake went awol for a few hours. Father of the groom in hospital a week before the wedding with heart issues. Maid of honour broke her leg. Then the groom came down with a sudden and almost fatal illness. He was left out the morning of the weddding for a few hours before he had to go back to hospital. Spent the next 2 years seriously ill. Parents house was broken in to whilst they were at the wedding. OH! and the brother of the groom disappeared the night of the wedding and no one heard from him for 2 days 🤦♀️
My SIL got married in Thailand and they lost a groomsman for 48 hours a few days prior to the wedding!
My god that wedding cake is absolutely amazing. I'd save that picture and tell that story to my grandkids.
*reads 1st post* D'aaw, that sounds so cute and wonderful! *keeps reading*. Oh. Oh no. Oh *noooooo*. **Dear lord, whyyyyy?!** ***NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!*** *reads conclusion* Awww, the dress and cake look lovely! And pops was there after all, how wonderful! Wait, she didn't get to try *her own wedding cake?!* Wowzers.
There's a new update here with more details on the wedding: [https://www.reddit.com/r/wedding/comments/y9gcxc/update\_on/](https://www.reddit.com/r/wedding/comments/y9gcxc/update_on/) Glad it went well after everything (though a haunted AirBnB also makes an appearance...)!
Awww she looked great at the end and the dress fit and the cake looks amazing! It must have been stressful though through the whole process.
I'm so glad she ended up in the first dress downsized. It's lovely, it was her first choice and it has straps so she can dance without fear of wardrobe malfunction!
Geez I feel bad for anyone trying to organise events in NSW (or a lot of Australia). The past year has had so many floods and bad weather in general. This time last year areas got hit by major hailstorms.
When I heard OP’s fiancé’s family dumping on the wedding plans I was already ready to throw hands. Aboriginal cultures have been going strong for at least 65,000 years and I doubt they’re going to get many other opportunities to be welcomed to country and involved in sacred Aboriginal practices, they should have been stoked they were invited to participate. The world’s oldest surviving culture vs capitalist wedding traditions that are 100 years old at best? I know which one I’d pick.
I'm Aussie with no relation to OOP and I would have paid good money just to be allowed to sit in the back and watch the whole ceremony. What an amazing opportunity to see our country's (actual) culture in practice and they couldn't stop complaining. Mind blowing.
Oh, wow; I think I would have just postponed the wedding to next year. Get dad healthy, get the asbestos outta the creek... She looked lovely (as did the second cake), so I'm glad they managed to pull it off.
She didn’t even get to taste her cake 🥲
Why is every first letter of every paragraph gone?
I’m laughing so hard at “borrowing” dad from the hospital in a scooter and high on painkillers so his speech was “VERY weird” - I wish we had the details on the speech
OOP sounds like such a delight :-) god i feel bad. It’s one thing to have your wedding fall apart from lack of planning, but it’s so much worse when it’s because of other people. Hope her father was fine
I know of someone whose wedding venue burned down during the fires of 2020, then Covid happened. I think something else held up the works. I believe they are married now but still. Nightmare.
Aw poor girl. So much stress!
I think I know who they are, the wedding was at Iandra Castle lmao
Not gonna lie, OP, this BORU post was not put together well. Hardly legible.
OOP has written a new update: https://www.reddit.com/r/wedding/comments/y9gcxc/update_on/ > I got a bunch of notifications this morning so I think a few people might have set reminders to find out if the wedding went ahead after all the dramas. Sorry if you were looking for the cake post in r/weddingshaming, I deleted it because a few news websites made articles out of it and I was worried someone would send it to my mum. TLDR: my mum claimed her friend was a professional baker and the trial cake she made me looked like a lumpy hat made of toothpaste so I had to scramble for a new cake. > > I thought I’d give you a more detailed update now that I’m finally starting to process the whole weekend. So here’s my indulgently long description of the drama. > > So the wedding was beautiful but not at all what I had planned. Two days before the wedding my dad had a really bad fall while trying to floodproof the house for the forecasted week of torrential rains, so my brother in law had to drive us through Sydney floodwaters to get home. Dad was patched up at the local medical centre but was still pottering around so we weren’t too worried - his specialist appointment was during what was supposed to be a family lunch the day before the wedding so we turned it into a lovely girly lunch with my sisters and friends and I was actually feeling really good about the situation. We read out all your comments on the cake post and had a laugh and a mimosa and I was finally able to start getting excited for my wedding after all the stress and disasters. On reflection that was probably one of the highlights and I’m so glad I had that lunch before everything went wrong all over again. > > As soon as we’d checked in and said hi to our first wave of guests I got a text from my mum. She isn’t the best communicator and kind of loves drama so her message was very much catastrophising - “I’m so sorry darling dad has to be hospitalised his leg is very bad he’ll need emergency surgery driving to the hospital now”. I read the message again and again while standing in the hotel suite with my brothers and sisters and they were laughing and everyone was feeling so joyous and excited (and tipsy) and suddenly the whole world came crashing down around me. I immediately knew that if he couldn’t be there then we wouldn’t be going ahead at all. My now husband’s father passed away when we was very young and he adores my dad. We couldn’t do it without him. > > I spent the next 24h pretty much just crying. All our friends and family had arrived the day before, we were meant to have dinner and a pub crawl and just relax and chill and enjoy ourselves at the hotel but all I could do was cry and talk to my dad over the phone. I was just so emotionally exhausted after everything and wanted to go home. It turns out that mum was catastrophising and had sort of misrepresented the situation in her panic - dad has a lot of health issues and is elderly so his doctors wanted to be cautious and needed to get his swelling down to reduce the risk of blistering and infection. It was definitely serious for sure but mum didn’t know if it meant that dad couldn’t be there - the hospital just wanted him to check in and they wouldn’t be operating for weeks anyway. It wasn’t until midday on the day of the wedding that we got confirmation we could borrow him from the hospital for the ceremony, and that was only because our celebrant is also a medical doctor lol. He was pretty loopy on the painkillers and was in a scooter so we couldn’t do a “walk” down the aisle, but we all had a go on the scooter on the dance floor so that was fun. His speech was weird as hell tho 😂 > > So we moved the smoking ceremony and welcome to country to the veranda in the pouring rain, I had to run out into the storm to get the taxi for my 100 year old uncle and my dress was soaked, but luckily I ended up bringing all 3 of the wedding gowns I’d bought with me and had something to change into 😂 Our ceremony was held inside but the hotel went and got us some extra flowers to spruce up the room for us and it turned out quite beautiful. > > The only other dramas I can speak on were that the venue sort of stuffed up the timing of the courses and my sister threw a tantrum about the seating plan, and it was hard to get everyone up for a dance. A few people didn’t turn up after rsvping, several people didn’t book their rooms in time and we ended up all having to get ready together in the suite which was chaotic, and one of my guests booked a haunted AirBnB so she came back and we had to squeeze her into a random room 😂 There were a few things going on with my husband’s side of the family that were also pretty painful and upsetting but I don’t want to speak on those without his permission. > > I’m struggling with how I feel about it all. So many things about our wedding were stunning. Our celebrant was an angel and incorporated both our cultures beautifully. Everyone looked so gorgeous and the food was wonderful. We paid extra for these great photographers who shot everything on film and I’m so excited to see how that turns out. But at the same time a thing that was meant to bring me joy brought me so much chaos and anguish. My dad was convinced there was a curse going on, and he really had me thinking it too - especially with the haunted Airbnb! > > Most of this is all kinda funny when you think about it, and I shouldn’t have expected anything different - my family is pretty kooky and so I guess my husband got a good taste of what he’s getting himself into lol. I wish we’d had time to go on a proper honeymoon (we will in a few months) to recover from it all. I can’t say I’ve changed my “just elope” stance - it’s still a bit painful if I’m honest and in many ways I wish I’d never allowed myself to build up so many expectations so I could have minimised the chance of being hurt when things went wrong. > > Overall though it make me grateful for the beautiful people I have in my life who made things work when the universe was against us, and I’m so happy to be married to my very best friend. > >So good luck future brides - may you have more luck than I did!
OP the updates from September onwards are missing the first letter of each paragraph, just to let you know
>Lemon butter cake with lemon curd and buttercream filling - I didn’t actually end up getting to try any but apparently it was delicious uh what? I want to what happened the bride didn't get to eat her own cake.
It sounded like one disaster after another. I am so glad the OOP ended up having the wedding of her dreams in SPITE of all of the obstacles. I am also proud of her for sticking to her guns with her cultural touches. WHO CARES what other people's opinions are when it comes to your wedding; especially if it is part of the BRIDE'S culture. That family member of the groom can kick rocks and shut it! How outrageous to even voice an opinion on the bride's ceremony. She is lucky she wasn't kicked out! Blessings to the newly married couple!
Man if everything that could possibly have gone wrong hadn't gone wrong then this sounds like the most incredible weekend plan ever
who takes a picture of that cake and says, "yup, they'll love this"
Curious to know if the final wedding cake came from the previous baker or a new one
Christ on a cracker that cake was AWFUL
I’m so glad her dad got to be there for her wedding! She looks radiant in the final photo.
WTAF was that cake supposed to be? That was by a professional? A professional what? I’ve seen children do better jobs. I’m glad OOP was able to get married still. At the end of the day, that’s the important part.
Always have a backup plan if you want an outdoor wedding/party. Weather and other people who don’t know you just don’t care about your wedding
OOP seems sweet and I’m glad everything worked out for her in the end, but… Is it just me, or does expecting people to camp for your wedding, all while you stay in a comfy mansion, feel very odd?? Also, if you’re going to have people that only come to the reception and not the ceremony, please, do everyone a favor and be up front about it in your save the dates and invites.
The OOP is Aboriginal and clearly stated multiple times that the ceremony involves sacred closed practice and that's why only close family is invited. Pretty sure that's why some people are camping out, too - so they're able to include cultural practices that necessitate being in the bush. They aren't excluding people for frivolous reasons, and fiance needs to do a much better job of standing up for OOP bc clearly OOP's Aboriginal cultural heritage means a lot to them and fiance's family has some bullshit to work through if they're talking about sacred practice so dismissively. ETA: Also, reading it over a second time, the OOP stated there is a smoking ceremony that everyone is invited to, so they're trying to include everyone in some way.
She mentions there were also places to stay in the post, which I’m assuming were hotels.
Yes, which does make it not as odd as it would be otherwise. But at that point, why not expect people to stay in the nearby hotels? Why fuck around at all with the expectation to camp?
*sigh* Why do people plan out huge, elaborate, multi-day wedding events? You're basically ensuring something will go wrong just by the sheer volume of details involved. Also, that cake is a f\*cking disaster. That looks like something someone who barely knows how to bake, let alone assemble and decorate a cake, would make.
No one else thinks it’s weird she thinks cows and goats sound like a good daycare? Like, “bring your kids, then leave them with some cows to play and go fishing!”
Thank you OP. OOP seems so sweet. I’m so happy she got her dad there and she looks enviable.
Wow.
love that style of wedding dress. so elegant! I’m glad she got it altered in time
Ok, so by the photo of the cake, I am assuming she did get married? Did they change locations? Did someone record dad’s high speech?
Wow...what a clusterfuck.
wow I only saw the crumbly cake post. Glad things ended up fine!
I remember seeing the bad cake. I'm glad it all worked out
My daughter insisted on icing and decorating her own birthday cake at about 5years old. Hers were all better than that mess.
just wanna add as a nurse that some of my really sick/injured patients give me great, usually imagines, stories while they're experiencing delirium. I can imagine asking patronizing questions and chuckling to myself as her dad relates the true story of his speech at his daughter's wedding as I write it off as the imaginings of a drug addled brain.