Bake Me a Skinny Cake!

I've been having cake nightmares lately. Not because I have any form of doubt surrounding Cathay from The Sugar Syndicate - she is superbly awesome and talented and will make me a fabulous cake! But I became worried that my beloved cake would be a little, well, short. I blame my panic on all of these wedding shows I watch were people have like 8 foot tall cakes. I, however, am having a reception for 120 people and most definitely don't need to have enough cake there to serve 500 people, hence my having ordered a 1 foot tall cake instead.

I had been hesitant to contact Cathay because I knew that I couldn't make any changes to the cake that would impact the price. I simply can't justify it. But I continued to find myself worrying about the cake at odd times, so finally yesterday I emailed Cathay.

If you'll remember, my cake inspiration had been this beautiful cake done by Cathay:

Source: The Sugar Syndicate's Flickr page

Ours would say "congratulations laura & steve" and have tiers in varied heights as theis"bird cake" does, with this sort of tear drop pattern in black going down the left hand side:

Source: theknot.com

Lovely, but still, I felt it might be short. And, I was struggling to find a cake stand that would work for the cake, since the bottom tier would be 12 inches in diameter, so Cathay encouraged me to have a stand that was at least 13 inches in diameter...not easy to find!

Stuck in the back of my mind was this "skinny" cake that Cathay had done before:

Source: The Sugar Syndicate's Flickr page

I liked that that size felt very unique, and it definitely has some more height on it! So when I emailed Cathay yesterday, I referenced this cake...having no clue how many it served and if it would be an option for us (again, with our same design elements was had decided on, just different tier sizes). And...it will work! This cake also serves around 120 people, is 18 inches tall, and the bottom tier is 10 inches in diameter, so that would also help solve my cake stand issues.

I'm still waiting to hear back from Cathay to confirm that everything is golden, but it sounds like we should be able to make the switch and have a "skinny" cake (now, if only this also cut the calories!).

At the end of the day, would I have been happy with the cake we had originally planned? Of course. Am I happy that I didn't dwell on "what if" and just emailed my fabulous vendor to see what other options there might be in order to fit my vision while staying in my budget? Absolutely!

Have you hesitated to make a change after booking a vendor?