On my way out, I saw the bride greeting the guests, and swear yall,
SHE HAD ON A HALTER TOP DRESS AND DID NOT SHAVE HER ARMPITS.
The ugly cake was nothing compared to that. I was dumbfounded. I mean, it's 2007 and I didn't know women were still walking around with what looks like a private part under their arms. Who knew??
OMG!!!!!!! ROFLMAO!!!!!!!!!!!! 
Cassandrascakes -
Aren't you glad you weren't invited? Although, you probably could have sold Alka-Seltzers or Pepto pills for a premium price outside the door...
Theresa 
You know what though - after reading all these, I wonder if anyone has gone to a wedding where >I< have done the cake, and thought any or all those things we've thought about other cakes. Hmmm.
When I did my nephew's wedding, I was standing off to the side talking and my husband pointed out a lady checking out the cake. I watched her for a few seconds and told my husband, "Oh, she makes cakes, too!" He asked me if I knew her. I said, "No.....but I know the look!"
She and I spent quite some time "talking shop"!
I haven't been to a wedding in quite sometime. But, I was disappointed in my own cake. It seems to me in hind sight that they had baked fresh for the tasting and used frozen for the cakes. I don't necessarily have anything against freezing, but how long had it been frozen for? It had that funny freezer taste.
[quote]Aren't you glad you weren't invited? Although, you probably could have sold Alka-Seltzers or Pepto pills for a premium price outside the door...
Probably could of, because I know everyone's appetite was ruined after staring at her pits. I got home and called everyone I knew to tell them. They didn't even know her, but I just thought it was appalling.
OMG what if my cakes are like that! I always wonder as not attending the wedding you may never know. Peace of mind when the bride emails or sends you a note saying how great the cake was. But then there are the brides who don't even contact you with thanks. Are these the ones who think your cakes were bad or do they not have manners. I even had the groom ring on the Sunday to say how great it was and that they were still eating it at the bbq so how nice was that.
To me if they were not happy I would like to know as that is the only way I can improve so it doesn't happen again.
I find myself critiquing other cakes all the time- in my head only, of course!
Recently an aquaintance sort of undercut me on a wedding cake order- the bride was talking about having me do the cake and was trying to find some pictures/ ideas/ etc, when this other person said "I will do your cake for way less ($$) than she can" Since money was an issue for her, she took the offer. So when I saw THOSE picture- lets just say I had to bite my tongue so hard it still hurts! Really I felt bad, because I know how meticulous this girl (the bride) is and the cake just was not up to standard!
edit: BTY- the whole unshaved pit thing is gross to me, but there are some people....!
To this day, the cake at my wedding is a bad memory. This was long before I did cakes, and I knew NOTHING! about ordering one.
I sat with her, and chose a picture out of a Wilton Yearbook. She brought no pictures of her own work. Had I known then, that would have been a red flag, yes? But she assured me she had a floating tiers stand, and I ordered a cake using it. I also ordered peach lilies, and gave her a swatch of the bridesmaids' dress fabric, to illustrate the color. I specifically said, I know sometimes people hear peach, they think pink. Think coral. I am not having a pink wedding. She assured me she could make lilies, because I was adamant that I did not want roses. Everybody has roses, I said, and I am not everybody! I wanted something unusual.
I am so thankful that my sister told me before the wedding. Julie, on your wedding day, there will be something not right. There will probably be something really wrong. Just remember, your guests do not know that this is wrong, and to them it looks beautiful. Act like it is just what you wanted. Thank you so much, Jane.
I walked into my reception and about fell out. There was my cake. .........all wrong.......... every bit of it wrong............... And all I could say, to myself was.......... well, it is pretty, and nobody knows it's wrong..........
Three layers, when I had ordered four. The top layer would not stack on top, so she just set it in front of the cake. The stand was not there. So the satellite cakes were just surrounding the cake.
All of the cakes were covered with pink roses.......
Turns out the lady had overbooked. Done three weddings in one day. When I spoke to the caterer, he was livid. He said she had destroyed his reputation in one day, because she had messed up the other cakes as well. One of them was supposed to hang under a chandelier, and she had made it too big. His words "I'm never using her again."
It's kind of part of why I haven't had the nerve to do a wedding yet. I don't want to ruin someone else's wedding.
....and it's really irritating to me 
when I walk into a reception hall and have to "hunt" for the wedding cake because it's shoved back in the corner like an afterthought! I tell my brides, "Your cake is the centerpiece of your reception! It's the only food that is wedding food. You don't have wedding chicken or wedding salad, but you DO have wedding cake and the only place to get it is at a wedding! Show it off like you're suppose to!"
I was just wondering how many people go to a wedding and look at the cake and think, "I really could have done a much better job!", or critique all the details and problems with the cake. I couldnt help myself but thinking about what I could have done better and how much better it could have tasted..oh well..
Ha Ha, I have had my daughter call on her cell phone from a wedding she was attending to tell me about the cake. "Mom, they paid a fortune and it's nowhere near as nice as yours!"
LOL!!!!!!! my sister and cousin do that....they even go as far as to send me a picture to my cell phone!
You know, I've never done a wedding cake (been at this for 6 years) because I am such a perfectionist and am scared to death of messing up someone's big day. This actually gives me hope, because if so many other decorator's are out there doing a lousy job and getting paid for it, then I certainly couldn't possibly be any worse. ...Nah, it still scares me...I couldn't bear it if someone was criticizing one of my cakes this way. BTW - My wedding cake was the most beautiful and best tasting cake I have ever seen or tasted, and I really lucked into finding her.
I have a show room in a shopping mall, open to everybody who wants to come and see.
I have other cake ladies come to my store and they many times critique the cakes, and tell there friends how did I do this or how they would do it better,(they always come with a friend that keeps saying "you can do that just the same") They must assume in just a sales person cause they do it in front of me, I just smile and pretend to ignore them.
Other people just stand in the window and give an opinion on how they would do things differently
I think is funny how everybody things they know better...
And yes Im guilty of doing it too
Oh yeah!! LOL i went to my cousins wedding on oct 2006. i couldn't help but take pic just to see how hideous it was. Sorry but it really was bad. It's a cake that the hall gives to all parties. not sure if it was a dummy or not, but i saw the exact same one coming in for the next party. only it was plain with no flowers. ok this just bothered the heck outta me. LOL couldn't they at least just offered different styles of cakes?!
So i'm going to a sweet 16 (niece's) this saturday. I'm expecting the same thing. it's a different hall, but they are giving the cake - or it's included in the price. not sure how that works. all i know is that it's from a bakery up the block from the hall. and all i can stay is that they need to take a course for "new" cakes for the 2000's! lol Don't get me wrong, but 80's cake was nice for well the 80's. 
I've seen both beautiful and not so beautiful cakes. I've also had great tasting and not so great tasting ones at weddings.
My best ones involved my son - at my SIL's and BIL's wedding the first words out of his mouth - right in front of everyone were "Mommy, why didn't you make their cake? Your cakes are so much prettier!" 
The other was when I delivered a cake - my son went with me to "work the doors for me". After it was all set up he was upset when he realized we didn't get to stay and eat some of it!
Debbie
I was the maid of honor for my mothers 2nd wedding, and it was way WAY before i got into decorating, but i saw the cake and i almost fell over, she was so disappointed that she cried. It looked awful, the basketweave was falling of the cake and the flowers didnt match anything, but it tasted fantastic, i think thats what saved her from killing somebody!
I know I am my own worst critic...but I bet if a professional cake decorator went to a wedding where my cake was there, they could find fault too!
So far so good with taste though...I always seem to get rave reviews....
Unfortunately I just can't get the wedding orders. I'm not yet licensed so I have to go by word of mouth, and so far most of my word of mouth is regular parties and not weddings.
....and it's really irritating to me
when I walk into a reception hall and have to "hunt" for the wedding cake because it's shoved back in the corner like an afterthought! I tell my brides, "Your cake is the centerpiece of your reception! It's the only food that is wedding food. You don't have wedding chicken or wedding salad, but you DO have wedding cake and the only place to get it is at a wedding! Show it off like you're suppose to!"
Love it! 
I didn't mean to sound as if I think my decorating is so superior, but I do at least try to camouflage the big imperfections and hope nobody else except another cake decorator notices the smaller ones!
You all are to funny!! The last wedding I went to was one of my friends in September ( I made her Bridal Shower cake). I have known him since 7th grade, and I have known her for about 7 years. She wanted everything to be perfect. She found a picture of what she wanted, a hexagon shape covered in fondant with simple scrolls around the sides and roses on top. She asked me for advice and I told her what I thought. We get to the reception cake is horrible! It was crooked, the icing was 2" thick (I'm not exaggerating). It was not the size she ordered,it was iced in Pastry Pride, and it did not have the scrolls. when it was cut two of the tiers were actually round cakes iced to look like hex shape cakes (we scraped of the icing to see). And since there were not going to be enough serving she made a sheet cake, but did not tell her until it was delivered! Not many people ate the cake, she had over half of it left. I recommended bakeries around the area that I go to when I don't have time to bake, but she didn't like the price, she paid this lady $1 a serving. She said next time she will pay. This is so long! But I knew you would understand.
Erica
Ha Ha, I have had my daughter call on her cell phone from a wedding she was attending to tell me about the cake. "Mom, they paid a fortune and it's nowhere near as nice as yours!"
What a nice daughter you have Shirley....just lovely!
Julia
Now ya'll have me scared. I am making my brother's wedding cake(s) in a couple weeks. They will be my firsts. How many people are going to look at the cakes and say "I could have done that"? Oh well, all I can do is my best...plus I'm making the cakes for free.
this is such a funny thread! I was just at a wedding this past weekend 3/24/07. And the first thing I did was go over to the cake and checked it out! I also took pictures. Well the icing was smooth but the decorations to me were ugly! I figured oh well that's what the bride wanted. Then when we were served the cake 
omg! the cake was SOOO dry! (I guess it was supposed to be a genoise from scratch!) Dry as a board! And then the weird thing is that the cake was a 3" cake but it was torted unevenly; like 1" on the bottom and 2" on the top and this was for all the tiers! I walked around the reception and noticed so much cake left on the plates with 1 bite taken out! I know I'm not perfect and far from a professional, but making sure things like the torting was even would have stressed me out to get it right! Plus I would not be happy with a dry cake either. Anyway, I will get my "just desserts" soon enough! I will be making my 1st wedding cake in August! so the tables will be turned!
What's even nicer
My husband went this weekend to help our daughter decorate a hall (she has a wedding decorating business) and when he got home he went on and on about how ugly the cake was and I could have done such a better job.
He's so cute. He said "I don't want to hear how you don't think you do a good job, after seeing that cake I know you can".
Oh, and my SIL piped in too. Made my day
..... I walked around the reception and noticed so much cake left on the plates with 1 bite taken out!
To me, this is the big test. I think we can forgive something that doesn't look perfect (come on admit it .... we all remember those days when we did our first few cakes! ) as long as it tastes ok! I do the same thing when I'm collecting my plates after a buffet ...... empty plates are a great compliment to me!
Oh, I've definitely got it in my blood to be a cake snob when I go to weddings... I'll be the first one to criticize my own work, so there... We own reception halls, so long before I got into the cake deco business, I saw every single wedding cake that came through our halls.. All I can say is it was good motivation that if I wanted to start making cakes, that I could on my worst day still do better than most that come in there.
But... Oh, have I seen some that whoever was doing the decorating was DRUNK! I thought it was intuitive to smooth the icing out, nope.. I thought the idea with swiss dots was to make them look like dots, not chocolate chips... When it comes to putting ribbon on a cake (even though it's a No-No in this state), you would think they would put it on evenly when it's in the middle of the tier, nope...
But, I still LOVED and 
ishly relished in the time that I was NOT asked to do the wedding cake (even though it would have been a FREE gift to the bride/groom who were CONSTANTLY complaining about not having enough money to pay for their wedding), and I knew this before their work shower... I made the most LAVISH, SMBC, MMF, WASC, with coconut/strawberry filling to color match PERFECTLY their wedding invitation with some crazy rose cutout design. The bride got into a fight with her Mom because she didn't take me up on the offer to do the wedding cake
CoutureCake, you're my kind of girl!
I remember one cake I saw years ago. All BC, but instead of piping green leaves behind the flowers, they just squeezed a blob of green icing and plopped the flower in the middle of it. I mean how hard is it to put a leaf tip on the end of the bag if you're gonna be squeezing out icing anyway!? I guess from a distance it COULD have looked like a green leaf .... if you had cataracts in one eye and was blind in the other! Even tho' way back then I was definitely a novice in this field, that vision has stuck with me all these years later.
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