It’s more than just cake

By Marjorie

I have a little four-inch photograph cut out of a magazine of my dream cake. I found it a couple of months ago, and since then, have not been able to part with it. It’s a four tier, square cake with white fondue frosting and black lace overlay. It’s absolutely the most gorgeous cake I have ever laid eyes on.

And having this particular cake for my wedding made all the sense in the world to me. My wedding is a black-and-white affair, the bridesmaid dresses have black lace on the bodices, and its contemporary square shape mixed with the elegant lace overlay – it’s just fabulous! It matches everything to a T.

So with my four-inch torn clipping in hand, I went to my dad and showed him my dream cake. My dad paid for the cakes at my sisters’ weddings, and so to follow the trend, he’s paying for mine. Explaining to him how important it was to get every detail as seen in the magazine, he smiled, took the photo and said he’d take care of it.

A few days later, my dad called, explaining to me that his fiancé’s sister is a cake decorator and she is going to do my cake. Wonderful, I thought! Having someone linked to the family decorating my cake gave me reassurance that this cake would be everything I wanted.

Unfortunately that didn’t happen. My dad called a few days later and told me that his fiancé’s sister couldn’t do what I wanted and that I should look for a different design. I was heartbroken, but took the news in stride and began searching for a different cake design. Luckily, I found one and sent it to my dad.

A few days after that, my dad called and said she couldn’t do that cake design either. This time I was a little taken back and started to ask more questions. Why couldn’t she do these designs? What should I be looking for if the two examples I had already given weren’t doable? I was confused.

So, I sought counsel from my mother, who gave me the reassurance I needed. “Don’t sacrifice the cake you want, for the sole purpose of keeping it in the family,” she said. She told me that I deserved to make my four-inch-magazine-cut-out cake a reality for my big day, and that I should search high and low until I found a cake designer who understood how important this cake was to me.

Needless to say, I took her advice and am now searching for a remarkable cake designer who will make a wedding cake that is as spectacular as the four-inch picture I’ve been drooling over for the last four months.

So take this as a token of advice. Your wedding day is supposed to be everything you want, so make it that way. If you run into a vendor who can’t make your dream a reality, keep looking. Because I believe that dreams do come true – even if the dream is based on a small, torn magazine photo.

An unexpected gift

By Sarah

When Tony and I announced that we were engaged, the first thing my grandmother said was, “Are you going to decorate my walker?” Followed by, “Who’s going to walk me down the aisle?”

Even on oxygen, who knows how many pills and later a broken tailbone, she never thought whether she could make the trip from Rochester, N.Y., to Des Moines, but when could she get here.

Worried that her health wouldn’t hold up long enough for the ceremony, Tony, my mom and I flew out to see her shortly after our engagement. She was never blessed with a sense of fashion, so my mom and I took it upon ourselves that trip to buy her a new outfit complete with black strappy sandals and a beaded top, which she proudly talked about with her friends as the trip approached.

It meant so much to her to see her first grandchild get married and even more for us to have her there – one of only two grandparents still in our lives between the two of us and the only one who could make it.

Despite failing health, she looked radiant that day as she put her walker aside and used my brother’s arm for support as she walked down the aisle. She engaged my friends and Tony’s family in conversation, and they later told me how charming she was and how grateful they were to have met her. At the reception, there was a moment where she hummed along with the saxophone player, who was playing one of her favorite songs from the “old days.”

We didn’t realize just how lucky we were until she died two weeks ago, a little more than six months after the ceremony.

As I look back at pictures of her from that day, I realized it was the happiest, healthiest and most vibrant she had looked in a long time. It was an event that she held on to throughout that year and wouldn’t give up until she had a chance to be a part of it all. She hated missing out on anything.

For us, it became one of our greatest blessings.

Picture not-so-perfect

By Marjorie

Engagement pictures. It’s just another sign that I’m really doing this. I’m getting married. And well, let’s just say getting the engagement photographs taken was an experience of its own.

Now when I think about getting photos taken, I think about nice matching outfits, a happy fiancé and a cordial photographer. Well, let’s just say I had two out of the three – I was missing the happy fiancé.

Driving home to Cedar Rapids the Friday night before our pictures, I kept imagining different outfits and color combinations that would look best for our picture. Should we wear bright colors since it’s summer? No, he won’t go for that. Should we wear black since we’re having a black-and-white affair for our wedding? No, then we will look like we are going to a funeral. So that’s when I made the final judgment call: We would both wear white.

When I arrived at my fiancé’s house, I greeted him with the great idea that we would both wear white for our engagement pictures. I told him he would wear a white cotton, button-up dress shirt and I would wear a white cotton, sleeveless dress. I could picture the amazing photos in my head.

Little to my surprise, the sugarplum fairies dancing in my head in white cotton outfits came to a quick end the following morning when we were both trying to get ready for our 9 a.m. photo shoot. His jeans didn’t match mine, his sleeves weren’t rolled-up evenly, and he gelled his hair straight down?!? He always gels his hair spiked and messy. This was not the scenario I had dreamt about the night before.

So as I moaned and groaned in the car on the way to the photo shoot, griping because his hair was gelled straight down, I came to my senses. I do not, and will not, be one of those crazy bridezillas that I see on the WE channel.

I can’t control my fiancé’s jean color, or the way he styles his hair. And does it really, truly matter if one sleeve is rolled up more than the other? Well, not to him, and that is why I love him. These small things almost ruined our engagement photo session, and very well could have been reflected in the pictures.

Now I finally understand what it means when my mom always tells me: “Don’t sweat the small stuff. It’s all small stuff.”

Setting the scene

By Marjorie

If you had asked me a year ago if I had any thoughts on marriage, I probably would have laughed and said, “Don’t do it.” With a string of bad marriages in my family, my optimism on the sacred union wasn’t too high. But after being exposed to my fiancé and his incredible family, my pessimism turned around and I realized that Tyler and I would be the strongest married couple ever, thanks to his family.

Tyler’s mom and dad have been married for over 25 years and they are the exemplary couple. They share with us their tactics on managing finances, handling arguments and the importance of maintaining friendship. Absorbing their marriage and seeing how it has been reflected in their son gives me assurance that Tyler and I will be in the same spot 25 years from now – crazy, madly in love!

Having met six years ago, I’m convinced Tyler knows me better than I know myself, and vice versa. We have spent more than three of the past six years in a dating relationship and have been engaged for more than six months. We are each other’s No. 1 fan, support each other 100 percent and are ready to conquer our futures together.

And on November 8, I will get to officially proclaim my love for Tyler and leave the planning, the chaos and the mess of organizing a wedding behind me. So join me in my trek to the altar, because in approximately four months, the pre-wedding hassle will be over and the honeymoon rendezvous will begin.