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So the tradition for this comes from way back when newlyweds got busy working on that first kid right after marriage. Saving the top tier of the cake meant they didn't have to bake another one. Flour, sugar, and all that jazz were expensive back then, so it was all about saving pennies (isn't it always?)
Obviously, most people don't have kids the first year of marriage anymore, so it's more about cele ating the day and remembering when the two of you cut the cake just hours after tying the knot. Here was our wedding (cup)cakes on our wedding day, in all its glory:
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Those cupcakes came in four flavors: Chocolate cherry, lemon, chai, and one more than I can never seem to remember. It might have been some sort of Hawaiian mixture. Yeah, that sounds familiar. Truthfully, until we cut into the cake for our first anniversary, I couldn't remember what flavor the top tier was. Clearly, the cake was really important to me. (It was chai, by the way.) I think I snagged a chocolate cherry cupcake later in the night (that's my favorite flavor of cake), and then I definitely had a lemon cupcake the next day.
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Often, bakers will include a small round cake for your first anniversary so you don't have to deal with these shenanigans. My baker didn't, and even if he had, that baker is out in Arizona. So my mother, God bless her, procured it from the wedding venue (I don't really know how or when), wrapped it up tight, and stored it in her freezer for 8 months. If that wasn't enough, she and my father visited in December, and she lugged it out here, wrapped up even tighter and packaged in a cooler in her suitcase. It made it, though the rearrangement of her clothing indicates TSA was slightly confused when the suitcase came through the X-ray.
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In the end, the cake really wasn't that bad. But it kind of seemed like a shame that we defrosted teh cake, cut two small pieces, ate them, and then -- after all the work put into keeping it safe for a full year -- dumped the rest of the cake tier in the trash.
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But, seriously -- it's one-year-old wedding cake. What else were we supposed to do?
