Can I get a permanent job taste-testing cakes?

This weekend has been wedding madness! It started Saturday morning with a trip the the seamstress to find out how much is will cost to get the alterations on my gown done (less than $200 -- not bad!). That was promptly followed by a meeting with a bakery, then a trip to the reception & ceremony sites for some brainstorming, then a meeting with the florist. On Sunday, we tackled honeymoon plans, selected our save-the-dates, found transportation, finished the order on our custom cake topper, and collected all the addresses for our friends and family. Phew!

As you can see, I have much to catch you all up on! Let's start with one of the most fun items: cake tasting.

Our first cake tasting appointment was at Twiggs. I've already shared with you a few of the designs that we saw on their website. After looking through their books again, we also became really partial to this design:

We thought that it would work nicely with our topper. The guys at Twiggs were great, and mentioned that if we got the topper early, they could create a design that would be based off of the details from the topper, since clearly it's an important element for us. But on to the more important issue: taste.

JT's parents joined us for the tasting. Before diving in, JT's dad mentioned that wedding cakes usually look better than they taste. He's right -- they usually do. And that's precisely what I want to avoid.

They brought out a board with small pieces of their 15 different flavors. There were two flavors that stood out to everyone as the best of the bunch: 1. Miss Hazeltine's chocolate (a very simple chocolate cake with chocolate cream cheese frosting that was wonderfully moist) and 2. the "Victorian Wedding" (a white cake with an unusual combination of raspberry and rose water!). I love chocolate, so I'm always inclined to go that way. But the Victorian had such an interesting hint of rose...it was really good as well.

They are already getting pretty booked up for our date, so we are going to have to make a decision soon. But I do feel it will be important to try out some other places too. Next on the agenda: Fab Cakes. Here's a sampling: