A bit about wedding cakes

So I have been away.  I went to Orlando with my hubby to attend a wedding.  It was a good time, with good people and good food.  Oh the food.  Now I don't have anything about the wedding food to share except this one photo:

Wedding cake.  Yum.

This cake was pretty awesome.  Weddings cakes can be a real letdown.  When I got married, I was very concerned with having the best wedding cake I could.  And mine was pretty amazing.

This was my first anniversary cake.
I had worked with the bakery to design a cake to match the invitations I made for my wedding.

But the cake at this wedding we went to was pretty amazing.  It was dense and moist and not too sweet.  It also had something for everyone.  One layer was vanilla with vanilla filling.  The next was vanilla and chocolate with vanilla filling.  And the top layer was chocolate with chocolate filling.  I had a piece from the top.  :)

I guess gone are the days of dry cumbly cake had at weddings just for the tradition of it.  Now wedding cakes are all sorts of delicious.  Speaking of tradition, did you know there are some pretty silly and interesting traditions surrounding wedding cakes?  For example:

• A slice of cake put under the pillow of a bridesmaid will make her dream about her future husband
• It is tradition to save the top tier and eat it on your first anniversary (we did NOT do that.  We got a new top tier cake made at the bakery our wedding cake was from)
• Before wedding cakes, there was a "bride's pie", which was a mincemeat pie with a glass ring hidden inside. The woman who found the ring was next to be married.
• the cake cutting ceremony is meant to be the first act the bride and groom do as a married couple.
• Wedding cakes are white not because it symbolizes purity, but because before the Victorian era (when it took on the purity significance) it was hard to come by refined sugar.  Therefore the whiter the sugar, the more refined and more costly the cake was.
• In Roman times grooms used to break a piece of bread (which later gave way to cake) over the bride's head to signify fruitfulness and good fortune. 

This makes me want to make some cake...