I'm making my second wedding cake for my brother in law's wedding on Aug 3, and the reception venue has become a real pain to deal with. The wedding is about 2 hours away from my home, so I have a motel room with full kitchen for the weekend so that I can finish or touch up the cake, which is currently frozen. I'm not sure what I should do and would appreciate any opinions or input.

The wedding is at 4:30 pm and my husband is a groomsman, so I need to be at the church by 4:00. The reception place doesn't want to let me in until 4:00. Needless to say, this isn't going to work. When I talked to the coordinator about two weeks ago, she agreed to let me in at 3:00.

Today, I receive a voice mail telling me that my arrival time is 3:30, which is the time I had hoped to leave the site to attend the wedding. I'm very concerned about the breakdown in communication at the reception site and am concerned that the cake table may not be ready at 3:00. I do have a call into them to discuss this, but in the meantime, I wondered what you would do. 3:00 is OK, but is cutting it a bit close since it only allows me about 1/2 hour to set up and get to the church; if they're not ready when I get there (which seems likely considering the communication skills of these people) I will have to leave the cake there in pieces since it can't stay in my car, go to the wedding, and come back and set up the cake when everyone else is arriving at the reception.

Just as an aside, I agreed to do this cake as a favor to the bride under the assumption that I would be able to get into the reception site by 2:00 at the LATEST. I am not charging her, but this fiasco is making me think that I should have just said "No" and is causing an awful lot of stress for me. At this point, my solution is to go to the wedding, stop at the motel to pick up the cake, and then head to the reception to set up the cake while everyone else is arriving. Since I know most of the guests, I don't have a problem with this, nor does the bride since I have already bounced this idea off if her. What would you do? Do you see any other options?

I just resign myself to the fact that if I'm doing cake and/or food for a relative, that I will NOT be at the wedding. I had two nephews get married 6 days apart (one was hubby's nephew ... one was my nephew).

At my nephew's wedding, my sister (mother of the groom) said she had a friend who volunteered to "help out" at the reception site if I wanted to go to the wedding. I laughed and said that was a very generous offer, but contrary to what non-food people think, my work doesn't start when the guests arrive at the reception ... my work starts at least an hour ahead of time, which is about the time they are playing the wedding march. "When you guys get there, that's when we take our "break" because we've got nothing to do until the food chafers need refilled!" (god luv 'em!)

No way I can set up a reception AND attend the wedding. They either get my presence at their wedding ceremony ... or they get my cake/food at their reception .... but they can't have both.

Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately, I already tried to explain this possibility to the bride and it's not an option. She told me she'll wait for me to start the ceremony, and knowing her, she will. Add to this the fact that I did a wedding cake for my other brother in law a few years ago without any of these problems, for which the current bride was in attendance, and I don't think they'll believe me anyway.

If the reception venue is closer to the site of the ceremony, rather than the motel you are staying at, I would deliver the cake components to the reception site and attend the ceremony. Perhaps you could then duck out a bit before the end of the ceremony and assemble the cake without dealing with too much interruption with the guests arriving at the reception.

Since not attending the wedding is not an option, maybe take the cake to the reception location, go to the wedding, sit in the back and after it starts, leave and go set up the cake. This way the bride is happy, and you get a little extra time to set up the cake. Orrrr, can you set it up in another room that they will allow you into at an earlier time and then move it when you get to the reception after the wedding??? I don't know, these were just a couple of ideas.
Why are reception organizers not very nice to cake people??? Don't they know we're sweet??
Good luck!