This post is a few days late because I was slow getting the images off my camera… better late than never right?
Saturday and Sunday Heather and I looked into cake options for our wedding.
First up was Hy-Vee, but after a phone call by Heather we found out the “just drop by whenever” time frame they had given her wasn’t really going to work because the only person who could talk about wedding cakes was going to be gone in a few minutes, but she was nice enough to explain some of the basic details of what they offer, overall cost and cost per serving. The actual sit-down with them is still pending.
Next up was The Cakery, an aptly named specialty shop. They had a really good array of mock cakes showing some of their basic styles. Seven to nine full-sized wedding cakes takes up a lot of floor-space, but it was helpful to actually have something to look at, because translating the idea you have in your head to something you can talk about is surprisingly hard for something as iconic as a wedding cake. We got there a little early so had plenty of time to look at the example cakes before they sat us down to look at their library of pictures from different wedding cakes. Again they had an amazing wealth of examples of cakes, and fairly good presentation in the book. On a tangent, let me say that some people do some ridiculous cakes. I really don’t know how many guests you would need to eat some of those cakes, but I am thinking 500+ for more than a few in that book. Okay, back to the cakery, did I mention they had four small cakes for us to sample? I was the designated cake tester (verdict: “meh, its cake”) so I ate while Heather tackled the challenge of getting herself and the decorator on the same page for a cake design. We left there feeling like we had a really good idea what the cake should look like.
Its at this point that my Escape failed to start.
Our next, and Final stop was Wheat Fields, a destination so legendary among Omaha denizens we recruited additional party members for our expedition.
Or maybe it just worked out that Pam (Heather’s mother) and Elise (bridesmaid) were both in town, but it was nice to have them along. Wheat Fields is a bakery and restaurant, and standing in the bakery / lobby area it was easy to see how it gained the reputation it has. We then stood nearly-drooling over all the fresh baked deserts and breads for almost 20 minutes waiting for the sole cake decorator to appear out of the back room. She was a grandmotherly lady, a little flustered at first, but she knew a lot about cakes, and how to plan one for a wedding. They had maybe 30 pictures of past wedding cakes, mostly bad. At this point things were not looking good for Wheat Fields in the selection process, but then they brought out the cake:
I cannot begin to impress upon you how richly this cake deserves its reputation. Hands down the best cake I have ever had, no question. They were all pretty good but their flavor “wedding cake” is the one everyone is talking about if they say something about a cake from Wheat Fields.
At this point we haven’t technically chosen a cake option, but I can tell you Wheat Fields is the leading contender. When your reception consists of only cake, its hard to not rationalize getting really really good cake for it.
I do wonder what our though process would have been if we had done these stops in a different order. Hy-Vee was helpful because it established what cheap-but-professional-and-good cake would cost. The Cakery gave us a great set of examples to realize the range of options in appearance, and figure out what we actually wanted for a look. Wheat Fields changed our minds from the idea that “cake is cake” to thinking that there was some really good cake out there. We literally finished our interactions with each place thinking we would probably just go with them, but what the heck, lets try the next one.
in closing, you should come to my wedding! There will be cake! 🙂
-Jordan
Nelsons 