Cake is more than eggs, water and flour. Just so you know.

Sweet friends and readers, 

Whew!  We finished the cake and danced the night away.  

It was fun and hard work.  And I'm glad it's done.

Tier #2 - Butter Recipe Fudge Cake...yummy.

2 of the 3 layers cooling, for 2 hours 

Just one of the many, many, many bowls of buttercream icing,

that would be slathered all over the cakes.

My sweet little baking zone.

The Mixing Zone

Tier #2 frosted and trimmed.

This is not EVEN all the powdered sugar and marshmellows used.

Tier #2 draped with fondant.

My sweet friends Jeremy and Beth came in town just to help. 

(Ok, and see a few friends and attend the wedding.)

They loved rolling little balls of fondant until the wee hours of the night.

I'm really not sure whether he is showing you his creation 

or about to slap me for making him roll hundreds of tiny marshmallow spheres.

However he did invent the "dot-o-matic"

which was indispensable in making swiss dots for the cake!

Way to go Jeremy!

See!  Lovely dots.

Jeremy and Beth's diligent work.

Tiers #1 & #2

Red Velvet cake mix just looks like carnage.

Tier #3 - Red Velvet

The beginnings of the swirls.

Swirls, swirls, swirls

Beth and Jeremy planning their dowel strategy.

Seriously, the entire cake would have caved had they 

not done such an amazing job!

I hate that I don't have pics of the transportation of the tiers. 

 It was comical and nerve racking.  The bottom tier alone weighed about 50 pounds.

One of our biggest worries was overcome when I placed the second tier on 

and nothing fell.

Third tier was placed and it was apparent to me that accuracy and attention to detail are key.

The second tier wasn't completely flat on top and it caused the top tier to not be flush.  

This made placing the beading difficult and cause for much discussion.

The ribbons never would stay flush against the cake and our options were to pin them and have pins showing or use frosting and have big greasy smears all over the ribbon.  We decided to leave the ribbon as is, but I was never happy with it.

Sweet pretty Beth.  Such a servant's spirit!

Jeremy and his "birthday cake."

Detail of the finished product.

Top tier with topper.

All done.