Have Your (Cup)Cake, Part 2: Our Guests Will Nom Nom Them Too!

In my last cupcake post I discussed how our tasting went well, although we had to come up with a new plan for the quantity we'd order and new decorations that wouldn't be an added charge.

So back at the drawing board that is Adobe Illustrator, I took out our "bird's eye view" drawing of the shelves of our cupcake tower, which I'd originally created to see how many cupcakes we needed to fill the tower. I'd thought 18 dozen mini and 9 dozen regular sized cupcakes would be perfect, but we learned from Sibby's Cupcakery that using a mix of minis and regulars, we'd likely only go through 8 dozen and 7 dozen, respectively.

So I switched things up, and laid the shelves out again, this time with all mini cupcakes! They looked great too, and we were even able to cut some out, since we decided we didn't need ones on the back side of the bottom levels, as it would be up against a wall anyway. (For those of you who missed it the first time, here are the links to part 1, 2 and 3 of my posts about Mr. Cola and I building our 6 foot tall cupcake stand).

Here is the new layout of where the mini cupcakes will go on each shelf, with room left at the corners for flowers. (The original of this didn't have colors, just place holder circles, but after deciding on the designs, I went back and prettied it up for you! Click for a larger version of the picture.)


And after we'd decided we were going with all mini cupcakes, we could solidify the designs and flavors. Which I of course mocked up for you all to get a visual! On the left is the inspiration decoration from Sibby's website, and on the right is my mock up in our colors.

Carrot Cinnamon flavor with 2 yellow candy flowers and 1 purple candy flower:


Latte Love flavor with coffee flavored frosting and lavender polka dots:


Snickerdoodle flavor with a sage green ribbon stripe and butter yellow polka dots on the ribbon:


Red Velvet flavor with 2 purple candy flowers and 1 yellow candy flower:


Grandma's Chocolate Tea flavor with a lavender bow:


It all works out to 32 dozen total mini cupcakes, with two flavors/designs per shelf, alternating for visual interest. That's 384 cupcakes, and still way more than we really need for the reception. But our cupcake tower will look full and pretty (a priority!), and I'm hoping our guests will eat more of the minis than they would if there were regular sized ones available, since minis will make it easier to try more flavors. If each guest eats 3 at the reception, then we'll still have 84 left over; plenty for dessert at the Sunday luncheon!

And in case you're still having trouble visualizing how it will come together on our wedding day, with the 6 foot cupcake tower, 5 cupcake flavors and flowers for decorations, here is a mock up of the front two rows of cupcakes on a photo of the tower (click the image to see it bigger):


Sigh! It looks so good, and I just know it's going to look a hundred times better in real life. I hope our guests will love it. I think this is becoming one of my favorite parts of our whole wedding!

What is or was YOUR favorite detail of your wedding?