Johnny & Kristen's Wedding Cake: Deconstructed

Last Saturday we celebrated the marriage of our good friends Johnny and Kristen (see this post for the engagement cake I made them).  We had a blast!  I specifically bought a new flash for my SLR camera so I could get great pictures of this wedding.  I didn't want to miss a thing!  Here's the deconstruction of their wedding and groom's cake.

That's them (above) cutting the wedding cake.  It was slightly humorous because they weren't sure where to cut and then had trouble getting the darn slice out!  What a cute and yummy cake.  Can you see the cake topper?  Johnny is Chinese ... so I'm guessing it's something special in Chinese.  This was a four tier cake (2 hexagons and 2 rounds) covered in buttercream, piped royal icing, and adorned with ribbons and roses.

I tried to get a good look at it all.  The roses were real (which I heard the photographer be surprised at for some reason).  My husband and I thought they could have been fresher; they looked a little soft.  The rest of the flowers in the ceremony and reception were gorgeous, so we concluded that perhaps the baker got these roses themselves (they were not supplied by couple's florist vendor).  It gave me a little reassurance that the buttercream was not perfect.  You can see some bumps, but overall it was nicely done.  It had some ribbon that looked like 1 1/4" organza.  I would have liked to have seen it fit more snuggly on the cake, but I don't even know if it's possible.  The ribbon was held in place by the bead border in royal icing.

Can you see the cake boards?  They look to be covered in fondant, maybe?  The rim has a satin ribbon over it.  I'm guessing this cake was assembled such that each board supported its own tier, separated by a space for all those roses.  That looked a little rough, but I'm not sure how to improve on that.

I believe it was yellow cake and had a HUGE layer of cream cheese frosting.  My husband is a big fan of cream cheese frosting, so you can bet he gobbled his slice up.  It was so thick and rich, but not too sweet.  I think the outer icing was IMBC, very nice as well.  Subtle sweetness.  The cake was moist and tasty too.  I was quite pleased we were served with an outer piece so I could look at it closely.

Classy and delicious.

On to the groom's cake ...

Let me explain.  No, there is too much.  Let me sum up.  Johnny, my husband, and I all graduated from the University of Texas in Austin.  Hook 'em, horns!  Well, unfortunately Johnny's wedding day fell on OU weekend (we won, by the way).  In honor of that, his groom's cake has the UT logo and "OU Sucks!" on it as well as a little UT football helmet.  I was a little disappointed because when I gave Johnny the engagement cake, we chatted about Hang's groom's cake (2 weeks prior, see post here).  Johnny told me his cake was going to be a UT football helmet and would say "OU Sucks!".  I was expecting a sculpted cake.  Oh well.  This was a 2 tiered rectangular cake with IMBC.

The decorations and shell border were pretty simple.  The longhorn was shaped with a star tip and round outline.  This was a chocolate cake with raspberry filling and what I think was almond flavored IMBC icing.