Mmmm, Cake!

I love wedding cake.  They way they look, the way they taste... yum!  Speaking of the way they look, I went looking for how cakes use to look "back in the day" and here are a couple I found..

 1950's

http://fiftieswedding.com/50s-wedding-cakes/

1970's

please note the lit candles all the way down the stair case. 

http://www.weddingspinster.com/Bridge_Cake_(1970s).html

1990's

I'm pretty sure my mom's wedding cake looked JUST like this! Fountain and all!

http://scratchbaker.blogspot.com/2011/06/whats-old-is-new-again.html

I love a fountain as much as the next person, but I don't really want one under my cake.  When I first started looking at cake inspiration pictures, I fell in love with all of the colorful cakes. Ones with patterns and tons of details. Things I personally had never seen a wedding cake have, cakes like these:

http://www.weddingdressone.com/2010/10/09/pink-wedding-cake-12-2/

http://www.onewed.com/romantic/gallery/pretty-pink-wedding-cakes

http://blog.pinkcakebox.com/category/pastry-images/wedding-cakes

We went to a place called Zoe's Bakery in Covington, Louisiana (back when the wedding was in LA) to talk to someone about prices and to do a cake testing. If we were still having the wedding in Louisiana we would definitely be going with them. Their cake is to die for! It is also very well priced for the area. No matter what picture I showed them they were confident they could do it.

I tried talking to Lance about my ideas and show him pictures before we went in to cake test, and asked him some questions about colors and flavors, etc. To this he kindly responded: "It doesn't matter to me, I'm just there to eat."  Nice Lance, nice.

When we changed the wedding to Michigan, and were doing the different colors and feel, I changed how I wanted my cake to be too.  I started leaning towards a more "plain" cake base, with pops of bling or color. 

http://www.weddingandcakes.com/bling-wedding-cakes/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/24367079@N04/4681622669/

Kind of funny those last two pictures would both fit in with our wedding as they are right now! Even the 'B' cake topper in the first picture.  To be honest, that is the cake I think I am getting. Its simple and elegant. I don't want to try and do anything too fancy because my grandma's friend offered to make our cake, and with 250ish people on the guest list, it's going to be a pretty big cake. 

Not to brag or anything either... but she is only charging us $1.00 a slice. (Okay, maybe I am bragging!) That is such a good deal, and definitely comes in way under budget. All I have to do is provide the cake topper and the banding, which is easy enough!

Are you having a colorful detailed cake?  Or maybe a friend of the family has offered to make your cake too?  Is anyone having an "old school" cake?  I want to see pictures if you are!