More wedding events: The prize for the most drama-tastic event goes to.... the wedding cakes!

[sparkindarkness]

When planning the wedding my cousins received numerous offers from the extremely talented women of our family to make them a wedding cake (any one of these women could have produced a most stunning cake, they are extremely good).

Now, someone uninitiated in the ways of our family would probably have accepted the first generous offer and had that wonderful cake at their wedding.

And we would display the corpses of these people as a warning against such innocent naiveté.

My cousins are wilier than that. They knew that accepting any one cake would be construed as a dire and mortal insult to every other half-way competent cook in the family, one that could only ever be matched by something equally severe, like murdering their first born and eating the corpse in front of them. But even that might not offend them so much as them asking another relative to make them a wedding cake.

To avoid offending any of them my cousins decided to get a caterer to bake a cake (now, on hearing this I instantly headed for the nearest nuclear shelter and set the timer for 10 years when I would emerge to pick up the pieces and set up a small monument on my cousin’s graves... but apparently this worked. I can only assume they sold their souls to a daemonic entity of choice to pull that one off).

Of course, the worthy ladies and their cakes are not so easily put off. The wedding comes round and it turns out that several of these good women have decided to surprise the happy couple with perfect, multi-tiered wedding cakes... Have you ever seen 2 women enter the same room, each burdened with a large wedding cake? *cue high noon music*

Now begins the dance of the cake and a whole new school of etiquette arises.

The Bride and Groom will avoid ALL cakes as much as possible. Any photographs will include ALL cakes or none (though pictures of them before a table of 6 wedding cakes looks quite stunning really). They will not cut ANY cake. They must eat all cakes in equal quantities. The bakers of said cakes WILL measure pieces to the micrometer. Efforts must be taken to hide the order in which cakes were eaten.

A guest eating any cake conveys 2 messages: 1, this cake is the best cake ever and all the rest taste like sawdust marinated in manure and 2, the baker of this cake is a saint before whom all good men should bow while the baker of all the other cakes are vile daemons in human form upon whom with vomit our derision and scorn. Bakers of cake will treat you accordingly.

A guest eating 2 different cakes will get all of the criticism and none of the comment.

Any guest may be ambushed at any time to give a full and complete appraisal of any cake. Failing to criticise an opponent’s cake with sufficient venom or praise her cake with sufficient glowing benedictions will result in you being cast into the nether hells. NOTE: the fact you haven’t eaten any cake is NO defence and no excuse.

Carefully manoeuvre through the crowd as at any moment you can be ambushed by a woman holding a platter full of cake who will demand you eat a piece (cue Jaws theme). There is no excuse to not eating. Being full/having already had a piece/being diabetic/being DEAD are not sufficient excuses. Once consumption is complete please refer to the above point.

The catered cake should be avoided at ALL cost. No-one will cut it, eat it or otherwise have any contact with it. You should not stand too close to the cake, should most certainly not mention it, should not take photographs of it and should avoid even thinking about this cake. Even heaping derision on this cake cannot expunge the sin of having even considered it for a second. I suspect my cousins will surreptitiously call guests to their home during the dead of night and furtively distribute pieces of cake that have been carefully wrapped in brown manilla envelopes.


On the bonus side, we’ll all be eating wedding cake for years to come

Comments

[logophilos.livejournal.com]

Oh, gawd, tell me you're making this up! Between this post and the frottage nazis, I am suffering from an overload of 'are you shitting me?'

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

I shit ye not, the family is just THAT insane. even more so than the frot nazis!

[cadynaisabella.livejournal.com]

Perhaps it says something for the state of my family that I immediately KNEW you were not joking.

Of course, should I ever decide to marry my own Beloved, I doubt my Roman Catholic Aunts will want to cater to a sapphic wedding...

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

Heee, crazy families unite!

[tanarill.livejournal.com]

[pats the Sparky] I'm Jewish, love, which means that not only do I understand you and your family woes perfectly (yes, even the inbreeding, the last such wedding was three years ago and the baby is now a healthy two-year-old). And if you do not invite every single one of two hundred people to the Khannukah party (even though there is no chance that the ones in Australia are coming) with a hand-written invitation, and make enough latkas that everyone from two months to two hundred years can have six of them, you will be defenestrated.

It takes a very special kind of crazy to voluntarily remain a member of this religion.

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

Exactly - it is AMAZING how offended family can be over nothing! truly stunning


It can be seen as a kind of dedication test. Who needs to wander the desert, or almost sacrifice their son, you've got family to test you!

[meridae.livejournal.com]

So basicaly, whoever your cousin asked to bake a cake, they were screwed? If they asked one reletive they offended the others and if they asked none, they offended them all. And I suppose asking all cake bakers (six of them?) to make one smallish cake each and then, working together to coordinate each tier, fashion them into a magnificant creation the likes of which has never been seen was out of the question?

Sheesh . . you're just laughing to yourself, right now, aren't you? Laughing that you're gay and won't ever have to do the wedding thing.

Actually, are you sure it's things like this that aren't the reason you *are* gay? I mean, noone would blame you, honest . . . and the fact that you actually do like men can only be a bonus.

Teehee.

[semiotic-pirate.livejournal.com]

I'm glad I'm not the only one to think of the 'having them work together to create something for the couple' twist. Although I used a cupcakes cake instead of a traditionally tiered cake.

He could still do the get married thing. Just think of how much fun he could have, coordinating all that. No! Even better! Thrust all of it onto the Beloved and abscond completely from the planning process. Hee!

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

Yes. Well and truly screwed. This is the ultimate catch 22 situation. Remmeber, the whole large family is just LOOKING for an excuse to be offended.

Thast sounds like a wonderful, reasonable solution. So I will respond to it by saying...

BUWHWAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!! Oh that's classic!

Hells, like being gay would ever keep me safe from this insanity (but I DID kinda elope - so I avoided it!) Being aesexual is the only cure

[ladydyani.livejournal.com]

Heh. I love it. Sounds like my family. Except we don't compete over food, we compete for whose kids turned out the worst.

My dad is winning.

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

We have that competition as well! The "oh my children are such a trial" litany. It runs side by side with the "aha, my child is better than yours." Sometimes it can happen at the same time, which confuses the uninitiated

[sapphybelle.livejournal.com]

ahahahahaha oh dear, I wish I could be there with a video camera. Truth really is stranger than fiction.

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

We coiuld have a documentary!

[speaks.livejournal.com]

This sets all my evil zone atingle.

I may well write a campaign about this. (Sadly its hard to work cake into the Midnight setting)

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

"Evil makes my buttocks tingle" Now where did I read that?

It could be evil daemonic undead cake?

[tinimaus.livejournal.com]

I don't do this very often, but *facepalm*.

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

It utterly deserves it

[amynnah.livejournal.com]

Oh my God... O.O

Wow... Spark? You never fail to amaze me with these stories... ever.

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

They amaze me and I live them!

[baranduyn.livejournal.com]

**laughing madly**

Good to know that the Courtly Rites of Familial Food work on both sides of the Atlantic. Which is to say they don't work at all.

My own worst cake story in fine:

I hate Jell-O. Yeah, I know, nobody hates Jell-O. There's always room for Jell-O. Hating Jell-O is unAmerican, unnatural and probably illegal in some parts of the deep South. I still hate Jell-O.

So when I left my job in Florida to move to Texas years and years ago one of my co-workers (who was a very nice person, no side involved) decided to bake a cake to mark my departure from the job.

A Jell-O cake. Topped with Cool Whip which is the second thing I hate a whole lot.

I had to eat it and make yummy sounds so as not to hurt her feelings. I'm still resentful of this, mildly, though I remember the co-worker who took one look at my face when I saw the Jell-O cake and decided the only way to save me from real horror was to commit an act of public impropriety: she rounded up her friends and after I had the ceremonial piece of Jell-O cake topped with Cool Whip they decended on the remains and ate it all up. They horrified the baker and my core group of friends but I will love them forever for saving me the shame of having to take the remained of the cake home with me and likely tossing it out of the car window rather than let it in my house.

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

There needs to be an etiquette book on this kind of thing. A huge stoinking book that runs to 12 volumes.

By this I assume you mean Jelly? Horrible wobbly stuff. Rescuing cake eaters! That was quick thinking on her part!

[slice-of-nick.livejournal.com]

That was some funny stuff. By chance is your family old French royalty? You know that whole let them eat cake thing.

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

French royalty was more sane and reasonable. No, really

[semiotic-pirate.livejournal.com]

hahahahahahahahahahaha! oh, I do love you and your stories. now I want to see a picture of the happy couple with all those cakes!

picture, picture, picture *continues chanting*

one idea that could have (maybe) won the day would have been for them each to bake a bunch of cupcakes and to work as a team to build one of those cupcake tower cakes... see, you should have consulted me earlier. *wink*

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

Heee at least it amuses

The pictures acxtually look impressive,. bioth of them stodd flanked by beautiful multi-tiered wedding cakes


Now, all of you are being reasonable about this and you miss the most important point. These women are BATSHIT INSANE. Being asked to co-operate would insult them because it doesn't acknowledge that they are BETTER than HER (who she likely hates anyway). And they were asked to bake no cake and still turned up with a surprise cakes anyway. I can see them doing the same thing again "Aunt M, is that supposed to be a cup cake?" "Yes, it is!" "Um, it has 3 tiers..."

[thisdaydreamer.livejournal.com]

Tell the next one to get married to declare that they will be doing without a cake at the reception. That way, they will only have the "surprise" family cakes and not have to deal with the universally despised catered cake. One less thing to pay for!

You realize you are further convincing me that elopement is the only sane way to get married.

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

Aye, you'll still have the family drama but at least you won't pay for a cake people dare not think about.

Personally i'd go with the whole eloping things. Yes, I came to that conclusion loooong ago

[seryan.livejournal.com]

Wow. Just wow.

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

Completely and totally

[mauracelt.livejournal.com]

By the Powers! I swear we are related! My family would be exactly the same way.

The only way my niece got out of s similar situation was to bake her own wedding cake, she's amazing that way. Even still her step mom was not happy and nearly refused to attend the wedding!
My #2 brother was just about in tears, it's his oldest daughter and I was the one who raised her mostly, but when his wife said "No, I'm staying home, he almost missed his chance to walk her down the isle. Jeanne finally gave in, but you see? We are more alike than one could imagine. *sigh*

I hope your cousins are well, and the ladies have not found them yet, cake in hand. ;)

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

Heeee, the craziness, it spreads!

Damn! I would have thought she would have completely escaped with that ploy!

Gods, don't you just hate it when they get so petty about a wedding? But they doooo all the time!

My cousins are fabulous and so far have escaped family wrath - and we get much cake :). It's a consolation on this craziness that the ladies ARE such good bakers so we DO get good food out of the craziness :)