Recently, I was thrilled to have the opportunity to create a wedding cake that flew in the face of conventional wedding “Seasonality”. Thought I would share the details and some photos!

Many wedding magazines will tell you that fruits, berries, sunny colors, etc are strictly the domain of spring and summer weddings. I’ve never been a fan of the “supposed to” kinda rules that the great wedding industry machine puts out.

This early January wedding cake was themed around lemons and raspberries, inside and out! The cake was lemon with raspberry buttercream, and the cake was a sunny lemon yellow, with lemons and raspberries sculpted from fondant as the accent.

You see, although it was cold, dark, grey, and – did I mention – COLD outside, lemons and raspberries had a personal significance to the bride and groom. When they met, she was working in a cafe… and he would come by sometimes 3 times a day to buy lemon raspberry squares from her! Very cute and meaningful!

As we set up the cake, we noticed that the table names were “sunny” and happy too – the one nearest the cake table was the Lemon table, featuring citrus fruits as a centerpiece! The scent of lemon wafted throughout the reception area, as the staff busily prepped the lemonade that would be served. Lemonade in January! Love it!

An interesting thing to note about this cake – the final product we left was not the same as what we showed up with, nor what we had decided on in the contract!

The originally contracted idea for this cake was a lemon yellow cake with yellow piping on the borders. As the bride seemed fun, and her lemon raspberry bars story was so cute, I convinced her to let me do raspberry and lemon detail work on the cake (which was not any more expensive than plain would have been!)

As I finished the cake on the morning of the wedding, I really felt it needed something more – some swirlies piped around the little lemon/raspberry arrangements. So, I filled a piping bag with yellow frosting, and crossed my fingers that the bride would agree with me.

I met her as she got ready for her ceremony, and she was completely open to letting me go wild with the cake. I piped the swirls that I envisioned, and everyone was thrilled with the result! See below for before and after photos. The cake was perfectly nice before the extra piping.. but the piping really gave it that final “Ooomph”, I think!

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again… letting me run wild with an idea will always result in an amazing cake. I love it when my brides trust me and give me creative freedom!

Also, when it comes to planning colors, themes, flavors … break the rules! When done right, colors don’t have to be seasonal, and neither do flavors. Non-traditional venues can be a ton of fun, and self expression makes for a very memorable wedding.