Kennedy News and MediaA bride was left heartbroken when the perfect cake she’d requested for her wedding turned up looking like, and I quote, a lopsided ‘turkey with leprosy’.
It’s just not a description you want associated with your wedding day, is it? ‘Oh, the bride looked stunning, the venue was beautiful, and the cake perfectly resembled a lopsided turkey with leprosy.’
No thanks.
Kennedy News and MediaWhen it comes to your wedding day, you really don’t want any nasty surprises. Couples often take months ensuring every single detail is perfect, from the venue, the dress and the song list to the flowers, food and seating charts.
Rena Davis, from Georgia in the US, was no different, forking out $300 (almost £242) for her wedding cake a month before the big day.
After seeing her dream dessert online she asked the baker to recreate the design, which featured a blue peacock perched on top of a white cake, with blue circles cascading down to chocolate cupcakes below to form the tail.
Kennedy News and MediaSpeaking of her decision to hire the baker, Rena said:
[The baker] had made a cake for my best friend one time. Since then, she had supposedly finished baking school in town.
First off we sent her a picture via text and she said she could make the cake.
I called her and we agreed she would make the cake in a heart shape, and instead of one peacock she would make two.
Despite being reassured everything was ‘going to plan’ in the weeks leading up to the celebration, Rena was horrified when, the night before the wedding, she was delivered a lopsided sponge cake with a green and pink-patterned creature – I wouldn’t go as far as calling it a peacock – perched next to an orangey-brown one.
Kennedy News and MediaMinutes after the baker delivered the cake, one of the creature’s heads actually fell off. The creator hadn’t even managed to get the cake’s two tiers to sit straight, with the top one sinking into the bottom.
The bride recalled:
She came the night before the wedding. She set it up on the table and all the time, I’m looking at this cake, thinking ‘really, are you serious?’
I just walked out of the room. I had nothing else to say to her.
Five minutes after she’d left, one of the peacocks’ heads had fallen off.
Kennedy News and MediaRena text the baker and asked for her money back, but the creator insisted she could come up with a solution. She soon returned with some of the most technical baking supplies, Rice Krispies, and attempted to reattach the bird’s head.
The baker told Rena’s partner she’d worked for 50 hours to create the cake, though the frustrated bride said it ‘looked like it’d been thrown together the night before’. Rena pointed out she’d asked for the birds to be made of fondant but instead they were made of buttercream, plus the colours weren’t what she’d asked for.
The baker claimed she couldn’t successfully make the fondant but still she didn’t warn her customer.
Kennedy News and MediaRena continued:
I texted her when she left to say the cake was not how it was supposed to be. It wasn’t fondant, it was buttercream, and it wasn’t the colours I wanted.
Never once did I get a call. Everything was always going according to plan and she maintained it’d be there the night before the wedding.
It was a lopsided mess – nothing like I thought it would be like.
Devastated, the bride refused to even try the cake and she left it in her fridge for three days before throwing it away. The baker still would not give her a refund, claiming ‘she had 50 hours in it and she had to pay her mum for helping’.
PixabayOn the morning of her wedding, Rena tried desperately to find someone else to make her cake but her search proved unsuccessful. Instead, she had to pick up two cakes from Walmart.
Rena’s sister-in-law, Annette Hill, took to social media to speak about the ordeal, writing:
The one ‘peacock’ looks like a turkey with leprosy or something, and the white bird, which isn’t white at all, doesn’t even have a tail or look like a bird in any way, it’s just a brown BLOB!
There’s NOTHING supporting the ‘birds’ and the cake was already sinking so bad from their weight when it was delivered and it continued to sink worse overnight until the next morning, the day of the wedding, the birds were almost sitting on the bottom layer.
So, on the morning of her wedding, the bride was going from store to store trying to find a cake that would be suitable to use for her wedding.
Kennedy News and MediaThe pictures of the cake quickly gained attention online and it was only after Rena’s story went viral that the baker decided to give her the money back. The bride received an envelope in her letterbox including $300 (£242).
Commenting on the timely refund, Rena said:
We’d heard nothing from her since. She had not called or anything.
The only reason she gave a refund now was because of the viral post.
Thankfully, Rena and her husband had a lovely wedding day in spite of the cake fiasco. While they might not have had the cake they were expecting, it will certainly be one they’ll never forget.
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Emily Brown first began delivering important news stories aged just 13, when she launched her career with a paper round. She graduated with a BA Hons in English Language in the Media from Lancaster University, and went on to become a freelance writer and blogger. Emily contributed to The Sunday Times Travel Magazine and Student Problems before becoming a journalist at UNILAD, where she works on breaking news as well as longer form features.