Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Thrifty or Tacky: A faux wedding cake


A friend sent me this article about renting a wedding cake. I am not sure how I feel about it yet, so I thought I would do a short pro's and con's list. First, here is the description from the company whose idea it was:
Wedding cakes are the center of any wedding party. However, the cost of wedding cakes can skyrocket, also the possibility of falling over during transportation, heat and humidity for the outdoor weddings can be a major concern.

We provide a service, where you can rent the beautifully designed centerpiece wedding cake. The main cake is covered with real fondant, however the inside is made of foam and there is small compartment to place a small portion of edible cake for the ceremony. After the couple's 'feeding each other' act, the display cake is taken back into the kitchen and the guests are served regular sheet cakes from the local bakery or wholesale store.

After the wedding day, you slide the cake back into its box, drop it off at any UPS store and that's it! As soon as we receive the box, we refund your deposit.


Pro:No cake falling down in transport fiascos.
Con: No cake falling down in transport fiascos. America's Funniest Home Videos just lost a few entries

Pro: Kids cannot stick their fingers in it.
Con:: No con there. I cannot eat food from most households that contain children (though there are some exceptions (Suzanne)because I fear the nasty child fingers.

Pro: Couples can save a lot of money by getting their cake from outside the Wedding Industrial Complex
Con: It could come from Costco and be full of partially hydrogenated fear and I would never know. I tend to think that wedding cakes are made from scratch, hence why I eat them. That it could be from a nasty supermarket seems sad to me.

Be on the lookout for this new way to save at your slew of summer weddings. It could be another game to play: is the cake real, or is it foam?

p.s.
Overall this feel very postmodern to me. Excuse the attempt to translate Jean Luc Baudrillard but if you have a fake cake, and the cake is a simulation of a real wedding cake, what is next? It reminds me of how Westerners (White people) living in Japan would serve as fake wedding officiants at wedding facilities for Japanese couples who want a Western ceremony (cake, white dress, here comes the bride song.) These guys would just be acting like they were marrying the couple. Strange.

1 Comments:

Blogger Nineveh said...

I have a friend who is a culinary school trained pastry chef. She just bought out an existing bakery which did primarily wedding cakes and I was surprised to learn that they did the cakes entirely from mixes. All partially hydrgenated this and artifical that. My friend said that is how most bakeries are. (She is going to go all from scratch and organic.)

9:08 AM  

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