Step 1 - go ahead and elope.

Step 2 - involve wacky friends in the elopement process which eventually inspire a song title for the reception cake.

Step 3 - plan an interactive musicfest to celebrate aforementioned elopement.


(Okay, so maybe Toar and Candace didn't exactly plan it out that way. A little creative license on my part, I admit.)


The newlyweds are members of the rather happy-go-lucky group of Irish musicians my son is involved in. So, when they planned their reception, they planned a lot of music and dancing right into it. More on that later. For right now, let's talk about the cake....

 

How to Throw a Wedding Reception

by Toar and Candace

On the evening of the reception, the three of us headed out with cake and James' fiddle in hand.  Candace found the awesomest tiny wooden Irish instruments to put on the cake.  From fiddles and banjos in honor of her and Toar's areas of expertise, to a wee little accordion that opened and closed, and a bodhran with a teeny little tipper. In keeping with the theme of music, a family friend wrote them a song for me to put on the cake.

With everyone's tummies full of lovely nibbles (a mashed potato bar!  Who knew?!?), the musicians broke out the instruments and headed for the dance floor to play. Even the venue staff were enjoying the music. An Irish dance teacher taught ceili dances for those who weren't too full to kick up their heels. I've never personally seen an Irish musician shoo away a child, and as you can see, it didn't happen here, either.

The lovely composer with what I'm guessing is her first experience having her work rendered in sugar.


While I set up the cake, Toar entertained us with the story behind the cake song. I assembled the topsy tiers on site, so it was one of those cakes that I don't know exactly how it will look until it's all finished. It would have been cool to have had a ribbon of music from the top of the cake on downwards, wrapped around the tiers and instruments, but I couldn't figure out a safe way of transporting that as far as I needed to drive this particular cake to deliver it. So I decided the sheets of music on the topsy tiers would be good and the whole song would be represented on the cake more than once.

At the end of the evening, the staff cut and served the fudge-filled butter cake. They managed to make cake for 130 feed about 80, deftly estimating the number of pieces they'd need to cut in order to minimize leftovers. One lonely piece of cake sat on the table for a while once all the other slices were eaten, but by the end of the party, this is all that was left:

(Me with my gorgeous husband, at the reception. Unfortunately, it's hard to take an arms-length self portrait and make it look good.)