I will always give the customer what they want since it's their cake but it just frustrates me when you tell them something will not look right and they still want it..

For example, I have a 3 tier fondant cake due on Sunday. It's a rubber ducky 1st birthday party. He said he wanted polka dots and rubber duckys. He wants bright yellow on bottom tier with polka dots, bright pink on middle tier with cut out duckies, and the top tier is blue with bubbles and a ducky on top. I told him that the bottom tier would stick out like a sore thumb since the other two tiers and the whole party is rubber ducky themed. I would look at the cake and say "what's with the polka dots"? So I told him that we should do one tier polka dots, one flowers, and then the top one bubble and the ducky. I would incorporate all of the colors into each tier to blend them together. NOPE, he wants the original one. That's fine....I warned him it wouldn't look right and he still doesn't care. When he sees how stupid it looks I will refer back to my warnings.

Ok I'm done LOL Just frustrates me.

You don't know what other decorations will be at the party. it just might be polka dots AND duckies.

I once had a bride that wanted snowflakes and Xs and Os on her cake. I just couldn't see it and talked her into just snowflakes.

When I set up the cake, the whole room was decorated in both snowflakes and Xs and Os. The cake would have looked better with both.

Ya just never know how the rest of the room will be decorated - but your customer knows.

I dont' see how it will look silly at all. All of them have ducks on them. Just don't make the dots all big and gaudy.

If the customer likes it, that's all that matters. The baker's personal taste or point of view doesn't count.

I once did a Pac-Man game board for a 1st birthday cake. The parents wanted a baby blue cake and we know traditionally it would be black. It was the worst looking cake that I've made! When I arrived at the party.. the decorations were all baby blue with Pac-Man decor. The cake I thought looked horrible in my kitchen looked awesome at the party! You do have to listen to your customers because sometimes they do know.

My first thought was, wouldn't the polka-dots look kind of like bubbles, so you'd have one tier with bubbles, one tier with ducks, and one tier with bubbles and a duck. I would wonder about flowers on a rubber duck cake, myself. The way you do it probably looks great, but I can't visualize it.

If the yellow tier is the exact same color as the duckies, and the polka dots look like bubbles, it sounds nice.

Well, the cake turned out different than what the customer wanted...It was 85 degrees in my kitchen when I was working with the fondant and you all know how that goes. I covered all of the cakes Friday night and by Saturday morning they were all buldging and cracked. I had to tear all the fondant off and start again and when I did that the bottom tier just turned into crumbs. Hate working in this heat!

So the customer ended up with a two tiered cake, bottom tier hot pink with blue and yellow polka dots and the top tier bright blue with bubbles and rubber duckys. Looked really cute. I also did a 3D rubber ducky cake and 20 cupcakes. The customer was SOOOO happy. He actually threw in an extra $40 for all of my trouble and hard work

So everything turned out just fine!

Here's pics. I covered the two tiered cake in pearl sheen with my airbrush. Looked really cute

Aww...nothing like a happy ending to the story!

Glad to hear all worked out well

The polka dots and ducks are so cute! I love the way you did different sized dots, so they looked a lot like bubbles.