Cakes and Showers Bring Wedding Flowers

I am so happy to say that my best friend got married last weekend!! Laurel and Jeffrey had the most beautiful wedding, and I was so blessed to be a part of it! My mom and I threw her a bridal shower, and here are some pics from it:

 

When Laurel got engaged, she asked me to make her wedding cake. I told her she was crazy because, aside from Dax's graduation cake, the only cake decorating experience I really had was the many barbie cakes that Laurel and I used to make together for the little girls in our ward. I reluctantly agreed to do it and was still pretty worried about it, but as I researched the technical aspects of cake building (Google, Pinterest, and I now have an unshakable bond), I got really excited about it. My dad and husband were good sports for receiving practice wedding cakes for their birthdays :)

Laurel didn't give me much direction for how she wanted her cake other than she didn't want fondant. I decided to just keep it simple and do a delicious white cake with a raspberry filling in the middle (I was going to be adventurous and do different fruit fillings per tier, but we may or may not have had a "Hurricane Katrina" effect on one of my practice cakes with a different filling when the butter cream dam broke...). Here is the step by step process: (Note: please ignore me in all of these pictures- I ask my mom to take pictures of the cake and she thought it would be fun to include me in them) (2nd Note: There may or may not be a million pictures...) 

First tier, prepping the dam to catch the filling.

I'm going to call this amazingly delicious raspberry tasty goodness. 

First tier successfully assembled. 

 In all of my cake experience I had never done more than one tier. I was a little nervous about that part...

One thing I learned from our barbie cake days is that cake decorating does not pair well with humidity or rain. When I saw the approaching rain, I had a slight panic attack and raced against the clock. Thankfully we averted the rain.

 Two tiers assembled.

 Working on three...

 I had so much fun doing the piping :)

 Pearl candies! 

 The finished product!

A special shout-out to my fellow bridesmaid, McCall Barrick, for assembling the topper :)

There were so many nice things said about the cake to me and overheard and then relayed to me, and I really appreciate it! It was delicious too :) I love you, Laurel!