Our Wedding: The Cake

The second in a yet to be determined series of posts about our wedding. This one is about my favorite aspect of the whole event: my our cake.

Photo by JJ Horton Photography

I knew exactly what I wanted my cake to look like, but thanks to Cake Wrecks, I was terrified about finding a baker. I looked at a few people. Some were out of my price range, and others took three weeks to return my call (note to any wedding professional who may read this: DON'T DO THAT.). When I was browsing the Knot one night, I came across Cake Lady Jill. She had excellent reviews, had been featured on Style Me Pretty, and has been named one of the best wedding vendors in NC by the Knot members for the past two years. I assumed she would be out of our price range, but her prices are very reasonable.

Photo by JJ Horton Photography

After looking at her work, I knew she could handle my whimsical cake, so I took a chance and went ahead and booked her before being able to sample her cakes (a BIG downfall of planning an out of town wedding). But when I was home in October for my bridal shower, my mom and I met with her to do a tasting, and I was absolutely blown away. First, she is a ball of energy and has the most fun personality ever. She had pretty big sized pieces of each of her cake flavors, all of her fillings and frosting flavors laid out as well. She assembled pieces for both of us with her flavor recommendations.

It was very, very hard to choose. I wasn't a huge fan of the almond cake (it tasted like marzipan) but everything else was delicious. ESPECIALLY the lemon cake. Oh my goodness. That was the flavor we picked for the biggest tier. It was lemon cake, filled with fresh strawberries and lemon curd for the first layer and cream cheese frosting for the second layer. It was covered in Italian meringue buttercream and then covered in fondant.

Photo by JJ Horton Photography

Our top layer was even more delicious. It was a simple vanilla cake filled with raspberry jam, lemon curd and a layer of fresh raspberries. It was one of the best cakes and flavor combinations I've ever tasted (I've now started mixing lemon curd and raspberry jam at home and topping vanilla ice cream with it).

The middle layer was my least favorite. It was chocolate cake filled with raspberry buttercream and fresh raspberries. It wasn't my favorite, but it was still very good. I'm just not a big fan of chocolate cake unless they are seriously mounded with a creamy buttercream frosting. But Jill told me that every wedding she does, people always ask which layer is the chocolate one, and mom recommended I do at least one chocolate layer as well.

Photo by JJ Horton Photography

Jill was a pleasure to work with. When I met with her and showed her what I had in mind, we talked colors and design and she emailed me three sketches of cake designs based on what we had discussed. I didn't love one of them, so I emailed her and she promptly sent me another one (which ended up being the one). On the way of the wedding she arrived to set up while we were out doing pictures and set the cake up quickly. Our friends who were at our venue were seriously impressed at such a small woman just hoisting the cake up above her shoulders considering how much it weighed.

I absolutely can not recommend Jill enough. Anyone getting married in the greater Charlotte area should definitely schedule a consultation with her ASAP.