Ok, so I do cakes on the side as a hobby. Someone that I used to work with gave my name to their neice so she could inquire about a wedding cake. We get together, everything clicks, she requests a square 4 tier wedding cake. Iced smooth with two different colors of ribbon around the bottom of the tiers. The top of the cake has real flowers on top and 3-4 roses are on the cake in various locations. She also requested a grooms cake that has the sugar beer bottles on it. So everything is ready, I order these cake rings from Chef Rubber and anticipate that they will allow me to make the cakes quickly and perfectly. WRONG! They don't work, I end up spending more time cleaning up the mess they made then doing the whole cake! So now I can't get the cake perfectly smooth, great! Get it where it looks okay and I am no longer ready to throw it out (I have however cried and thrown a fit by this time!). Transport it to the wedding location, it starts to shift a little and looks like it is tilting when we get there. My husband and I carry it in, the two ladies working at the reception site say, "Oh, it is leaning!" (as if I couldn't see that!). So we fix it the best we can- it now only appears to be tilting if you look at it from a certain angle from the back and the flowers are disguising some of the icing issues. I am not thrilled with it, but I think it looks okay. The grooms cake turned out perfect. So now I am sitting her panicking that they hate it and it will ruin their wedding. We were supposed to attend the wedding, but I am so afraid that they will think the cake is terrible that I couldn't go. I did go back to the reception site about 3 hours after it was set up (right before the wedding started) and it was still standing and did not look any worse than it did when we initially left it so I am pretty certain at least they had a standing wedding cake. Please tell me I am being overly dramatic and that nobody will be checking for all the issues that the cake has. My friend has tried to tell me that everyone is just going to look at the cake as a whole, not an icing problem here, a tiltin here, etc....I guess I just need to whine!

It's your bad day and you can whine if you want to! BUT... don't be so critical of yourself. More than likely no one else even noticed the minor imperfections on the cake. I know I always stress about something that didn't come out like I wanted and 99% of the time, it's the cakes the customers rave about the most! You are much closer (physically) to the cake than anyone else will be and they look at the presentation as a whole, not under the microscope! Be proud you fixed what needed it and they had a beautiful wedding cake! Chin up! -Lori

We are truly our own worst critics! Last evening I had a cupcake wedding cake due. Well last week I was working so hard on making all of the gumpaste flowers to go on top of the cupcakes. I airbrushed half purple and the other half I left white. The purple flowers were going to go on the cupcakes that were frosted white and the white flowers on top of the ones airbrushed purple. They looked wonderful until I opened the boxes to look at them again a couple of hours later...the white flowers on top of the purple frosting started absorbing the purple and turned the flowers a pinkish color. It was midnight the night before the wedding and there was no way I was doing another 70 flowers. My husband kept telling me that no one would notice, but it didn't matter because I did! Well I just let it ride (normally I would have done all the flowers over again) and as my husband suggested, no one noticed and everyone loved it. I'm still upset that it did not turn out exactly as I envisioned it, but I guess it could have been worse. So I'm sure the guests didn't even notice your minor imperfections either.

Can I suggest that you use SPS to support your cakes in the future. No more leaning cakes!

I agree, go ahead and cry and then shake it off...I have done a couple of hundred weddings and I am sorry to say I still feel this way about some of my cakes. I see all these mistakes in it and I thought I could have done a better job. I was sure I had ruined the wedding. Beleive me, NOBODY notices !(I have to quote Duff..he said on one of his shows "If you ever notice a flower in a kind of strange place on a cake, you know it is covering a flaw!..So even DUFF makes mistakes! hahaha) My worse cakes the bride has come back with complete delight in how they turned out. I think some of the cakes I hated the most the customer loved the most! So you never know!

(BTW, hope you did go to the wedding! It would make your day to hear everyone rave about how great the cake is!)