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Immediately after the bouquet and garter tosses, it was time for CUPCAKES!Our wedding cupcakes deserve their very own recap post, since Mr. Cola and I worked so hard to design and build the stand together, choose the flavors and frosting designs, and specify the precise layout of the cupcakes on our stand.And here is our over-6-foot-tall beauty, in all it's yummy glory, on our wedding day!
And you know you want to see some detailed shots, so bring on the cupcake close ups! (Warning, try not to drool on your keyboard!)Our cupcakes were one of the biggest hits of the evening. Nobody could stop talking about them, and during dinner our guests were making bets, trying to guess how many there actually were (the highest guess I heard was 350, and the actual total was 385, counting the jumbo one at the top).Guests even had a little too much fun posing with the cupcake tower, as you can see in the below 3 guest photos.
(Pretending to steal cupcakes, in blatant disregard of the signs, LOL!)
I might be a little too excited about this!
I picked a vanilla cupcake with latte flavored frosting, and Mr. C went for the carrot cake.
Instead of an actual cutting, we had decided to just feed each other a bite of a mini cupcake. So taking the wrapper off first was an important step!
"Ready for this? Remember, the deal was no smashing, unless you wanted to pay for my makeup artist to stay the whole night!"
Getting the cupcake in Mr. C's mouth AND trying to watch the cupcake coming toward my mouth was a lot harder than it looks!
Nom nom nom!
I then gave Mr. Cola a frosting flavored kiss.
And as I brought my arm down, I bumped his cupcake with my elbow.
So I made him lick the frosting off, natch!
I must say, I was pretty pleased with myself for that sly move!
Then, we took a step back, and the cupcake stand was SWARMED! Mr. Cola said it was the only part of the night that he didn't feel like the center of attention, and so he took the opportunity to duck away. I ended up standing there for a while, repeating the cupcake flavors, all the while just trying to finish my half cupcake still in my hand from our "cutting."
(Nobody could take just one!)
We only had a couple kids at our wedding, and they begged for the giant cupcake at the top, so we let them have it. We weren't planning on saving it anyway, not when we can get fresh, not freezer burned cupcakes from the same bakery on our anniversary!
At the end of the night we still had plenty of cupcakes left over for the Sunday luncheon (which we had planned on), and our DOC even sent a small box of cupcakes with us back to the hotel that night, which I munched on for breakfast the next day.What are you serving your guests for dessert? Any other cupcake fans out there?
Miss any wedding week details? Catch up here:
- I packed an emergency bag that saved my dress- We had a crazy 4 days prepping for house guests and stuffing favors- Shopping for a ton of wedding flowers to arrange ourselves- Mr. Cola drinks a 40 and I have a night out on the town for our low-key bach parties- A day of DIY'ing flower arrangements- I kicked off our official recaps with my #1 wedding tip
- We began the weekend festivities with a sunset cruise for our wedding party
- We rehearsed our quick and easy ceremony
- I panicked, but we got our rehearsal dinner decorations set up just in time
- Our families met for the first time at our rehearsal dinner under the trees- What went wrong on our wedding day, and my tips for future brides
- My bridesmaids and I got our hair and makeup done in the hotel suite
- I put on my wedding dress and became a bride
- The guys watched the World Cup, then got ready in 10 minutes
- Traffic delayed our decorations getting to the venue, and I almost ruined our first look
- We got to see each other for the first time on our wedding day at our first look
- We took some time for bride and groom pictures in the park
- I gave you a behind the scenes look at our family, friends and DOC setting up our venue
- Arriving at our venue and getting ready for the ceremony to start
- Everyone walked down the aisle
- Excerpts from our ceremony, and reading the vows we wrote for each other
- I interrupted our officiant, we exchanged rings, and with a kiss we were officially married!
- Wedding party and family portraits, and my thoughts on missing pictures
- Our guests enjoyed cocktail hour while we took a few more photos
- Everyone ate a delicious dinner, and our siblings gave beautiful toasts
- We didn't practice, but we had a very special and wonderful first dance as husband and wife
- I showed you some disposable camera pictures, which were totally worth it to include on our tables!
- I found a target and tossed my bouquet at her
- Mr. Cola finally managed to find my garter under my dress and tossed it
(Unless otherwise noted, all photos in this post were taken by the very talented photographers of Shoot Me Now Photography)
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?
Alright, alright, I know I've made you wait long enough. Without further ado, here is the fully assembled cupcake stand!
Isn't it about the most awesome thing you've ever seen? Can you just imagine all the yummy cupcakes that will adorn the stand (9 dozen regular and 18 dozen minis, plus a jumbo one on the top shelf, as laid out in this post), and the flowers at each corner, plus the pretty lavender satin ribbon I will add later to the edge of each shelf? I think with some flowers on each of the four corners of each shelf and the lavender ribbon it will be decorated enough, since I don't want to detract from the pretty cupcake designs (we'll have brightly colored, intricate frosting designs from Sibby's Cupcakery, but more on those details later).
Must needed shots taken from lying on the floor and then standing on the bed:
So, now that you've seen it, here are some more details on how we made this bad boy. Let's start with the dimensions. Here is the breakdown, with the top shelf being 6" x 6" and the bottom shelf being 38" x 38". There's 6" between each of the shelves, but we cut the center support boxes to 6.5", to allow for the quarter inch high tabs on each end that fit into the 'L' notch in the shelves, which holds it all together.
Now, for the price tag. Here are the supplies we bought and the cost of each.
6 sheets of 4' x 8' MDF wood: $131.70
Cutting charges to fit it in our car: $8.00
3 1/4" x 3' dowels for pegs: $1.17
3 Drydex putty/spackling: $11.07
17 Semi-Gloss white spray paint: $58.72
Wood glue, large: $8.29
Hand sandpaper holder: $4.95
Sand paper: $3.58
Sand paper for electric sander: $2.69
10' x 12' painting tarp: $8.49
Grand total: $238.66 before tax
All in all, we spent about 9 hours each day of our three day Labor Day weekend, plus about 8 hours on the following Saturday to build this. And it was totally worth it!
I was so sad to have to take the stand down, carefully wrap it in garbage bags, and store the shelves safely under the bed in our 3rd bedroom. We'll take it out and set it up again about a month before the wedding, just to make sure nothing has warped, and I'll put the lavender ribbon around the edge of the shelves with double sided tape then.
Would you consider building a cupcake stand for yourself, or would you opt to go with the cardboard versions, or maybe just use what your baker provides?
On day three of this project we did a LOT of sanding, puttying and painting. The first step after everything was glued was to sand the edges to remove some of the black singed wood that is a product of the laser cutter. Paint and putty won't stick as well to the singed parts.
I then started puttying, here are my supplies, putty, the wood and a scrapper (which I didn't end up using, my finger worked best).
Look how pretty and pink the putty was! When it was dry it turned white, but it made me happy to put it on in the bubblegum pink color.
I puttied down the sides of the center support boxes, covering all the cracks where the pieces of wood met with a thick layer.
I also had to putty all the peg holes in the shelves, as well as the seams and the edges.
It almost looked like sloppy pink frosting on the edges!
After the putty dried and was sanded down flush with the wood, I could finally start painting. This is what we used, and it covered very well with only three coats.
Waiting for paint to dry in the parking lot at Mr. Cola's office, very exciting!
We used A LOT of paint!
A close up of one of the fully painted center support boxes (this center support suffered the only mishap of the project, two of the 'L' notches are kind of messed up. It was my fault, I wasn't careful enough when pulling the shelf off of it; since everything is cut to fit with laser precision, if you don't pull straight up, CRACK! But it's going to be hidden, and structurally doesn't matter very much, so we decided not to redo it.):
While I was killing my back by bending over and painting for hours, Mr. Cola was finishing up the bottom support box inside.
The bottom support box and the bottom shelf had to dry overnight, so it wasn't until day 4 that we got to putty and paint them.
Up next, we assemble the finished cupcake stand, and I'll share the cost breakdown and more detailed specs. I know you can't wait to see what this monster looks like all put together!
Did you, or do you plan to do any woodworking or painting with your DIY wedding projects?
(guest photo)
(Pretending to steal cupcakes, in blatant disregard of the signs, LOL!)
(Nobody could take just one!)
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