Wedding Cakes for the Blush-ing Bride

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Brides have fallen in love with blush pink and are using it as a prominent color throughout their wedding, from the flowers to the stationery and decor, their wedding dress, and of course, the wedding cake! The feeling is romantic and soft, and everything is so pretty! For our wedding cakes, this translates to whisper soft colors, pretty textures, and gorgeous flowers with delicate petals and full blooms. These are a few of our recent favorites!

cakelava was invited by Las Vegas wedding and event planner Emily Reno of Weddings & Events by Emily  to design a wedding cake for her blush pink garden themed wedding shoot at the Hilton Lake Las Vegas. Emily provided Rick with a color palette and some inspiration photos and he designed a wedding cake that integrated blush pink, soft textures, watercolor painting, and beautiful delicate handcrafted flowers.  The wedding cake is shown in the photo above and below and was beautifully photographed by Kristen Joy Photography. The cake was paired with pink and gold floral china plates and placed on top of a gold bar cart. We were proud and honored to work with such a talented group of wedding vendors! The entire list of fabulous vendors can be seen on the post  "Whimsical Pink Garden Wedding" which was featured on the wedding and lifestyle blog, Inspired By This.

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Another way brides are using blush pink is in their wedding dress. Some of our blush-ing brides are choosing to walk down the aisle wearing a pretty pink dress rather than the traditional white or ivory. The model bride in our wedding shoot above wore an exquisite gown of white lace and blush pink tulle.

Our bride Arielle also wore a blush pink wedding dress (shown below). When we began working with her, she mentioned she would be wearing pink and would like a similar soft blush pink color for her wedding cake. After seeing her beautiful dress, Rick was inspired to incorporate some of the same design elements found in her dress onto the cake - blush pink color with silver "beaded" accents, and made flowers loosely reminiscent of her ruffled skirt. The cake seemed like a perfect compliment to her dress!

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This next blush pink cake was designed by Rick back in the spring and remains one of our most loved cakes this year. It was created for a Boho chic themed wedding photo shoot at Legends Ranch. The styled shoot was designed by Paulina Clute Events and exquisitely photographed by KMH Photography. We loved Paulina's vision for her Boho chic wedding and her color palette of blush pink, ivory and sky, with pops of magenta, teal and forest green. Rick designed a 4-tier tall and narrow blush pink colored cake covered in white lace with a spectacular bunch of his handcrafted flowers placed in the middle of the tier.

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It was very romantic and managed to bring together a feeling that was both soft and bold, and refined and wild, all at the same time. I loved all the contrasts! Our cake and the Boho Chic wedding shoot was featured on the wedding blog, Bridal Musings earlier this summer.  

As the Las Vegas wedding season quickly approaches, we have more cakes with blush pink in the works and looking forward to making every one of them!

Viva the Fabulous Las Vegas Cakes!

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When in Vegas, order a Vegas themed cake! cakelava has been officially open in Las Vegas for less than 6 months, and we're already starting to rack up a nice collection of Vegas themed cakes. We're not complaining, we love doing the Vegas theme! They are colorful, artistic, the design possibilities are endless, and it is all some version of Fabulous! Here are some of our recent favorites...

Our "Vegas, baby" cake, shown above, is Rick's retro and rockabilly inspired design complete with flames, a classic car with checkerboard flags, dice, devil themed poker chips, and plenty of pin up girls! He went a little crazy with this one, but we're in Vegas, so crazy is totally acceptable, and encouraged!

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Turning 40 can be pretty fabulous in itself, but if you want to really celebrate in style, head to Vegas and order a Fabulous Fortieth Birthday cake, which is what Robbie and his family did. You're turning Forty, you've earned the bragging rights, so why not announce your milestone on your cake. There is no better place to flaunt your stuff than Vegas! Like Robbie, Rick and I chose Las Vegas to celebrate my Fabulous Fortieth Birthday. It was a birthday I will never forget!

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Like Robbie, Rory also celebrated his birthday in Vegas with a Fabulous Vegas themed cake. You can revisit our post of Rory's cake on the blog.

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We're in Vegas, and it was only a matter of time before we got a request for dice cakes, and this order came shortly after we opened. Rick made these dice cakes with the "Married in Fabulous Las Vegas" signage for a gay couple who recently celebrated their marriage at the Neon Museum. If you want to celebrate the fabulosity of vintage Las Vegas, being surrounded by the most amazing neon signs from the casinos, a visit to the Neon Museum is a must! When we arrived at the Neon Museum, we walked past a pair of Vegas showgirls who looked at least 10 feet tall! There was much excitement in the air and it was pretty clear, these gentlemen and their guests were ready to party!

Once, Twice, Three Times a Wedding Cake - The Fabulous Trio

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We began getting to know our wedding couple Bronwen and Matt before we opened our shop in Las Vegas. We had communicated with them while we were building out our shop and arranged a time to meet with them once we opened. By the time we met this talented couple, it felt like we knew a lot about them and could jump right into the cake design! The couple are amazing sculptors who appreciate art in all its forms, and their wedding cake was very important to them. Bronwen loves cake and confessed she began collecting cake photos years earlier. She had an extensive collection of photos to share with us. They wanted their cake to tell a story of them as a couple, and provided us a backstory, an introduction to who they were in text and photos that would help explain why they wanted to incorporate certain themes and colors into the cake. While we won't share the couple's private details, we can share the themes and colors they chose to tell their story:

sawblade
skulls
starry night
turquoise, magenta, black and gold
full bloomed flowers
pearls
anything shiny
vintage

After discussing their themes and noticing how different they all were, we knew it would be almost impossible to put everything they wanted together on one cake, so we decided it would be best to make a wedding cake trio that together would tell the story of Bronwen and Matt.

A Glimpse Behind the Desert Themed Marbled Fondant Wedding Cake

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When Style Me Pretty first approached cakelava to do a Facebook live video for them, we were extremely excited and honored to host them at our new Las Vegas shop! What is often the case with media/social media related project requests, first comes the wave of excitement - you feel giddy about the project. Then the reality sets in. You feel anxious and slightly overwhelmed. You have x-amount of time - often two weeks or less - to design and execute a project that will delight and engage the viewer. No pressure there! You have previous commitments to clients that are just as important and will also need your attention. You only have a couple weeks (or less) to get everything done!

Style Me Pretty Comes to cakelava for Facebook Live!

Style Me Pretty at cakelava for Facebook Live!

Yesterday, cakelava had a very special visitor come through our kitchen - Style Me Pretty! Yes, that Style Me Pretty! They came to shoot Rick decorating a marbled fondant desert inspired cake for Facebook live, and we all had a great time! We've had a mega crush on the site for years, and it was an honor to host them in our new Las Vegas shop. You can watch the whole experience unfold by visiting Style Me Pretty's Facebook Videos. We've also shared their video on the cakelava Facebook page. We'd love to hear your thoughts, so feel free to like, comment, share, or just say "Hello!"

A Desert Inspired Wedding Cake

Nevada's Valley of Fire State Park 

My list of Must See places to visit in Nevada is ever growing! Currently, at the top of the list is the magnificent Valley of Fire State Park, which is just over an hour drive from Las Vegas. I'm constantly seeing incredible photos of the Valley of Fire, and hearing from our clients getting married there how amazing this place is! I'm dying to see it in person! With the scorching desert temperatures this time of year, it will have to wait until the cooler temperatures arrive, so for now, I will appreciate its spectacular beauty from afar.

The Valley of Fire is a popular wedding destination with unbelievable natural beauty, whose landscape and colors are a perfect muse to inspire artists and designers to create and people to fall in love. I'm feeling fluttery just thinking about it!

If you are planning a desert wedding, the Valley of Fire State Park provides an array of colors, textures and patterns that would be a perfect starting place for a bride or wedding coordinator's inspiration board. When our clients Sarah and Joe provided their inspirations for their wedding cake, we were told they would be marrying at Valley of Fire and wanted Rick to incorporate that element into the cake. Like many couples marrying in Las Vegas, they were having a destination wedding and worked through the design process with us from afar.

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Rick's design of Sarah and Joe's desert inspired wedding cake started with a similar shape and floral placement borrowed from one of his earlier designs, called "Alana", (shown below), which Sarah said she loved! He included the Valley of Fire desert inspiration on the middle tier. Continuing with the desert theme, Rick made delicate handcrafted flowers that the bride's florist planned to use in her bouquet. The cake turned out beautifully and both the couple and we were extremely happy with the result!

Rick and I enjoyed exploring the desert theme, after working so often with the tropical theme in Hawaii. In our short time living in Nevada, we have really grown to love the beauty of the desert here, in the same way we fell in love with the tropics. We have to remind ourselves, as we did in Hawaii, how important it is to take time away from work to enjoy and explore the beauty that surrounds us!

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cakelava Las Vegas is on Instagram!

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About a week ago, cakelava joined Instagram @cakelava . If you are wondering why we waited so long to join, there is a little story here. Several years ago I looked into putting cakelava on Instagram, and I didn't get very far. Not getting very far is an understatement. I didn't get past choosing our username, because someone with no association to our company, or to cakes, already had it. At the time I could have chosen another username, but decided to put the process on hold. It wasn't meant to be. I was also turned off by the idea that the photos posted on Instagram don't belong to the individual or company posting them, so I treaded this avenue carefully. We already had a few other social media accounts to maintain and I thought "why add another one." My hands were full with running a cake business and various social media accounts. Why make more work for myself?

Then, our company and cakes started getting tagged quite regularly, which has been the case on Pinterest for many years. People were making comments and we weren't seeing them until much, much later. Sometimes, years! These were clients of ours, students of Rick's and many appreciative bakers in the cake community. It was important to be a part of the dialog and let the people leaving comments know we appreciated them taking the time. In addition to the cakes getting tagged, our clients began asking us if we were on Instagram. "No, but we're on facebook, twitter, and pinterest". cakelava was still based in Hawaii when this began happening.

If you've been following our cake adventures, you know that we moved cakelava to Las Vegas from Hawaii and spent part of last year building out our new custom cake studio at the Montage Shopping Center in Las Vegas. We opened earlier this year. During the period we transitioned cakelava from Hawaii to Las Vegas, we took a hiatus from making cakes and also largely from social media. If there was a time to join instagram, it certainly wasn't then.

We finally decided to take the plunge and join Instagram after we had established our new cake shop in Las Vegas. It was time. We were settling into our new home of Las Vegas and were regularly making cakes we wanted to share. We're enjoying being a part of the Instagram community and happy to see many friends there as well. We're excited to see what Las Vegas has in store for us and invite you to come along for the ride! See you on Instagram!

Surprise! - Rory's Las Vegas Themed Birthday Cake

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I love surprises! (Who doesn't, right?) One of the many perks of being married to a cake designer is my annual surprise birthday cake. Unfortunately, we couldn't observe our tradition my past two birthdays because our lives were too hectic with moving preparations for the first one, and this year, we were completely occupied with opening the shop. In both cases, it was a mutual decision to not do my surprise, and it was a missed opportunity for both of us - a gift that was lost, for both the giver and receiver. Having missed out on both of my birthday surprises, I was excited when we received the order for Rory's Las Vegas themed birthday cake, which would be a surprise gift from his family.

Rory and his family were flying in to Las Vegas to celebrate his 26th birthday, and were taking him to dinner at the uber popular Tao restaurant. This lucky combination of factors added up nicely - super nice clients to work with + surprise cake + an artistic Las Vegas theme + delivery to Tao = Jackpot!

I worked with Rory's mother and sister to plan his surprise cake. They provided us some photos for inspirations and requested a Las Vegas gambling theme, specifying the games Rory enjoyed playing and some of the elements they would like to see on his cake. We knew how special this cake was to them. They gave as much thought to the flavors of the cake as the outside, and after careful consideration, they chose our Peanut Butter Fudgey and Neon Lights flavors. Rick worked hard on the Las Vegas cake and looked in his element when he was making all the decorations. He wanted the cake to be a surprise the family would always remember! I could see how satisfied he was to be making a Las Vegas themed cake - in Las Vegas! He's made many before, but it's a little different making Las Vegas themed cakes when you are in Hawaii. I'm happy to say that Rory wasn't the only one who was surprised the night we delivered his cake to Tao! Our clients left the entire design of the cake up to Rick. Witnessing the reaction of the client upon seeing their cake is always the best part and I was lucky enough to see Rory's mother's face when she first saw his cake. Her face lit up and she looked ecstatic - the surprise was a huge success! We were told after the party that the cake was loved not only by Rory and his family but by many of the diners at the restaurant who approached their table and asked about the cake. What's higher than Jackpot? Is there a double jackpot, because I think we just won it!

Building cakelava, our new Las Vegas Custom Cake Studio, Part 3

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In today's post, we're quickly approaching the end of our new Las Vegas cake studio build-out. In case you missed Part 1, you can read it here, and Part 2 can be seen here.

When we took the above photo of the shop after our new illuminated sign was installed, there was still plenty of building commotion going on inside, as witnessed by the large workman's vehicles out front. In much the same way we dealt with all the photobombing ladders on the inside of our shop, having obstructions in our photos was part of the build. Embrace it or fight it. Capture the moment, or wait for a picture perfect moment. I wasn't about to ask our hard working team of contractors if they could move their trucks so we could get a unobstructed photo with the new sign. So here it is!

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Whether you have built your shop from a grey shell, as we did, or moved into an existing space for your business, chances are, at some point you had to purchase a sign, or two, or maybe even three. Prepare for your jaw to drop clear down to the floor, as ours did, when you begin researching the cost of signs. Those illuminated signs you see everywhere cost a pretty penny! Consider it an investment into your business and advertising costs, and then take the time to bask in the glow of your company name in lights, because it is really quite spectacular! We made a nighttime pilgrimage to the shop to see both our lighted signs - the "Monument" sign in front of the shopping center and our main sign above the shop. We have a different kind of sign on our front door, and another on the inside of our shop, because you can never have enough signs!

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Meanwhile, back on the inside of the shop, we walked in and saw the walls were painted, the pendant lights were installed, the concrete flooring had been polished, and there was a giant ladder obstructing our view as we looked at the wall. We had already had discussions of what would go on that wall behind the ladder.

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Once our kitchen build was finished and it began to resemble a kitchen, the equipment began arriving, and it was chaos once again! We could feel the excitement building as we watched every piece of our carefully laid out kitchen plans taking shape.

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Then, one day we walked into our kitchen and it looked exactly like the kitchen we imaged, only 10 times better. It was perfect for our needs, fully functional, and it was GORGEOUS!

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We went to great efforts to make sure everything was color coordinated in the shop, even in the restroom, which is very nice inside. We were surprised how many of our contractors, vendors, and even our inspectors, were impressed with the restroom...

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On another visit, we were greeted with the orange ladder, which was now moved to a different wall. I could have moved it. I decided not to.

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Since our shop didn't have electricity at the time, we often saw the front room in this light. Here is a view looking out into the parking lot.

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As more of the decorative components were installed, our excitement level started going through the roof! In Part 4 of this series, we'll share how it all came together!

We would love to hear if others have been through a similar experience with a build out of their shop and what their experience was like. We hope you have enjoyed reading about ours!

Building cakelava, our new Las Vegas Custom Cake Studio, Part 2

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In today's post, we're sharing the process we went through to build out our Las Vegas custom cake studio. If you missed Part 1, which focuses on how we selected our space, you can read it here.

Building a shop from the ground up is like making a cake from scratch, and selecting your contractors is like choosing a cake designer. You either spend the time to do the research and allocate whatever finances you can afford to do it right, or you can take your chances and hope for the best. Given that we moved our 10-year old, well-established, cake shop 2800 miles to a new city, we opted for the former. Relocating a business is enough of a risk, so we approached our shop build cautiously, with eyes wide open, and made sure we were at least 90% comfortable with any architect, designer, or contractor associated with it. Without having worked with our team of contractors before, being 100% comfortable would be nearly impossible, but we felt confident enough that the remaining 10% would follow. We didn't jump right into a build once we fell in love with our space. We took a few months of diligent research, and hired the best, most experienced craftsmen we could afford - who understood every aspect of their industry and came highly recommended. We ended up with designers and contractors who knew the importance of spending the time to build a structure that will provide support and safety for us and our customers, and we discovered it came with a bonus - they have a passion for what they do. Our comfort level jumped to 95%.

As with any cake, or project, the first step when you are ready to move forward is to hire an experienced architect and designer to customize the space to suit your needs and provide the plans that the contractors will work from. If the place is not properly designed, it won't pass code, and it will extend your timeline for the build and the inspection process, and time equals money. We thought about trying to design the place ourselves to save some money and we know best what we need for our shop, right? Wrong! Unless you are skilled at architectural renderings and know all the codes, you won't have the drawings you need, your contractors won't know what to do, the Health Department won't give you approval to build, and basically you will be screwed! Following code is one of the trickiest things about a build because the codes are constantly changing. It is the contractors' job to know the codes which will save you many headaches in the long run. Hiring a competent architect and designer is as crucial as having a great team of contractors. You'll sleep a lot better at night knowing your project is being done right. We've seen cakes that look pretty on the outside but sometime during the night they start to lean because of structural issues. We didn't want that for our shop, and hired the architect and designer. By now our comfort level was around 98%.
Once we had the plans finished, and they were approved by the health department, and the permits came through, we began the build!

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This was the first time we built out a grey shell, and we didn't know what to expect. We knew we wanted to witness the birth of our shop from start to finish, and made it a point to stop by almost every day while we were out running the day's errands. We were so glad we did because we got to know our contractors on a personal basis and really see all the hard work they were putting in. We were truly impressed with Tom Santoli, our General Contractor, along with Rocky, Randy, and the rest of the crew. They always went the extra mile for us and it definitely did not go unnoticed! In the early stages of the project, we would show up and there had been subtle changes, like a portion of the floor was dug up, or new slabs of material had been dropped off. Then, in what felt like an overnight transformation, we walked into the shop and there was framework and ductwork, and exposed pipes everywhere. There was banging and drilling and men standing on ladders. It seemed like everywhere we went, there was a man on a ladder. 

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Part of the reason for stopping by the shop almost daily was to photograph the whole experience. Walking into the place, we would get so caught up in what we were seeing that we often forgot to take photos, and when we did, there were always obstructions in the way, usually in the form of a giant ladder or multiple ladders. We have countless photos that were photobombed by ladders. I saw no point in moving them, because it was part of the experience, afterall. 

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The photo above shows the view from the front of the shop looking out. Nothing but shoes belonging to the workmen, shop drawings, permits on the window and of course, a giant ladder.

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Another photo (with a different kind of ladder) taken in the front area of our shop. This was the drywall phase.

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For the duration of the build out, we always brought a measuring tape with us, and it always came in handy. Every contractor had their own measuring tape but it was often in use. 

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We worked on our signage for the shop at the same time as the build. Our "Coming Soon" banner went up while our permanent illuminated sign was being made. The sign wasn't small. You can get an idea of sizing in the photo we took at our sign vendor's workshop. 

Once the banner was installed above our shop, we envisioned what the permanent sign would look like, and we started getting very excited! There was still so much more to do, but we were in the home stretch! 

Coming Soon, Part 3! 

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Vegas 7-7-7

It was the perfect request, really. A Las Vegas themed cake for a 77th birthday party. The client fell in love with our Las Vegas cake with the sculpted dice on our website, and wanted her mother's cake to be made similarly, incorporating the number 7's wherever possible. Her cake hit the jackpot as lucky number 7's were placed all around the tier. Rick made her a great hand of cards, and gave her good amount of poker chips. Everything on the cake was made by hand and the dice were sculpted out of cake. We hope this cake helped celebrate the start of her luckiest year yet!

Aloha, 'til next time!