Hi All, been in the biz for 2 years now, have about 22 weddings booked for this year so far. I'm a stickler for details and tend to worry some about problems that have yet to arise. Here's a big one, do all of you have a back up plan in case of the death of a close family member, yourself being too ill, one of your children in a bad accident, etc. do you have a back up plan if you have a cake(s) due and something like that should happen? I do not, and I can't help but wonder how I'll handle it when it arises. If any of you do have a plan, could you share it with me please?

you know, that actually happened to me. My sister died a couple of years ago. Sis #2 was taking the lead and making the funeral arrangements. I told her, "Tacky as this is, if we can do the funeral on Friday, because I have a wedding on Saturday, that would be great."

This wedding was small and I was going to be the only one working it but I had a couple of friends on stand-by (who had worked with me before) to do the wedding if needed. Since I normally had the cake done prior to the weddign day anyway, it would have been no big deal for my crew/friends to come in and pick everything up and take care of the wedding.

Unless it's me that's extremely ill then I still do the cake.

It's a good idea to have a relationship with another bakery or home baker that you can refer business to or ask them to take the order in case of an emergency.

When my Dad passed away suddenly I did have to reschedule a tasting appt that I had scheduled for that morning, but his funeral was on a Friday morning and I still did my orders for the next day.

It's difficult but when we're in the business of providing something as important as a wedding cake the show must go on, even if there's a death in the family.

I agree with the above, if it is your business, you have to make adjustments for such things. They are counting on YOU to provide what you have contracted to do. I am lucky to have a network of other cake business folks in my area that I would be able to fall back on if absolutely necessary.

I know it's different, but we had a HUGE family emergency the day before I was supposed to help my sister in this parade promoting her business. As much as we didn't feel like acting all happy and jolly, we had that responsiblity. In a way it helped. We were distracted for a few hours at least.

This happened to me. My son was shipped to the Medical College of Ga. in an extreme emergency. This hosp. is 3.5 hrs from where I live. he was in the hospital 2 weeks in renal failure- all of my orders for this 2 weeks had to be cancelled. I gave the customers the name of a friend of mine who does cakes, but no one actually used her. I'm really sorry that it happened, but unfortunately, the show CAN'T always go on. My son had a very life-threatening illness, could have died, and I was not leaving him- cake business or not. I will say, everyone who I had orders for was VERY understanding, knowing that my son was seriously ill.

It's good to think of this. I have family that can help....but if I'm in a bind...I have no problems paying another baker to help out. Hopefully my shop will be up and running with staff if that ever happens.

Thanks everyone. I wasn't suggesting that the client end up with no cake, just didn't know what I needed to do. I guess I need to find other local area bakers and suggest we be there for each other in times like that...