It is well-documented that the most interested party in any wedding is usually the mother of the bride. Our wedding was no exception. My mother, Marion Schleif, was in charge -- at our request -- because my husband-to-be and I both lived in a city about 400 miles away from my home church where the wedding was to take place.
The wedding service was the domain of the clergy. It was to be worshipful, meaningful and long.
The reception was my mother's responsibility. She made the decorations (which included fresh daisies from my parents' yard); sewed my wedding dress; worked everything out with the caterer; and ordered the cake.
Ah, the cake. It was ordered from a famous German bakery. It would be layers of soft sponge cake nestled between raspberry jam and whipped cream. It was to be frosted in pale ivory to match my dress and accented with peach to complement the dresses of my attendants.
On top would be the cake topper passed down through four generations of my family. My mother had even pacified my husband by covering the "Good-Luck" horseshoe over the bride and groom with dress fabric and adding a Christian marriage symbol in order to dilute the secularism of this sturdy heirloom.
My mother had seen to all of this in my absence.
When the 45-minute wedding service was over, we adjourned to the church basement for the reception. A beautiful buffet was planned featuring beef tips, various salads, a champagne fountain and for dessert -- the wedding cake. As husband and wife, we entered the reception hall.
The cake stood in the corner. It was yellow and orange and sported a thoroughly new cake topper of wedding bells.
My mother was not in the receiving line. She was on the phone to the bakery. Whose cake was this? (Who would order a yellow and orange wedding cake?) Where was our cake with the lovely Victorian bride and groom?
When no answers were forthcoming, she decided that the show must go on. The bridal party and guests sat down to dinner, but we put off cutting the cake until we found out to whom it really belonged.
Halfway through the dinner, a young man came sprinting through the reception. In his hand he carried our heirloom cake topper. In one smooth move he whisked the wedding bells off the top of the cake and replaced them with our ornament. He sprinted back out again amid the cheers of the wedding guests -- with my mother hot on his heels demanding an explanation. (I've never seen my mother move so fast.)
It really was our cake. My mother had provided the bakery with the refurbished cake topper and samples of the dress fabrics and had secured their promise that they would match the colors.
However, the bakery had lost everything except the instructions "ivory and peach." So they tinted the frosting their version of those colors. After my mother's frantic phone call, they searched their storeroom and did find the box with all the items in it. And they helped the only way they could at that point -- they brought us our cake topper and put it on the cake.
