The pleasure and disappointment of my wedding cake

If you look somewhere below, you'll see a post on how I was planning to make my own wedding cake. And the result is shown in the photos.

OK, so completely unimpressive (despite the fact that my cake is smiling at you!). Part one of the pleasure - we hadn't burned it! Part one of the disappointment - looked cracked and neither my mum, my brother or myself (the master bakers) had the skills or know-how to ice the three tiers we made.

We ended up getting my friend's mum to ice the tiers, which she did beautifully - part two of the pleasure!

Fast forward to the wedding day.

Having been married all but an hour and a half, I was desperate to get to the reception venue, just to look at the room. I had no control over the decoration of this room on the day; if you knew me at all, you'd understand the distress this caused me!

Ignoring the Pimms on offer, I headed straight for the tables, had a quick look (thinking all the while, 'I would have done this better'!) only to discover that my cake was a real disappointment.

The plan had been for the hotel to assemble the tiers, stacking and pinning ribbon around each tier, finishing off with a specific vintage cup and saucer, complete with fabric flower.

The kitchen staff had stacked it well but stuck the ribbon down in any old fashion, meaning that you could see the joins whatever angle you looked at it from. There was no cake topper and it just looked very sorry for itself.

Cue me abandoning the photographer (and my groom) to find the specific cup and saucer I'd selected!

At the end of the day, the cake tasted amazing (courtesy of a BBC Good Food recipe - see below for link) and the guests loved it. We didn't spend that much doing it and it was relatively stress-free. But I'd be lying if I said that the photograph of the wonky joins didn't bother me. It really does!

So much so that I am enrolling on a basic course to learn to ice a cake properly! Right after the wedding, this got added on to the '40 Before I'm 40' List (a post for another day!). I want to be able to do it myself, not have to rely on anyone else and line up the ribbon right, every time.