Monstera Wedding Cake

I love the Hawaiian monstera leaf wedding cake Rick made for Saturday's wedding. This was for the wedding we delivered shortly before pulling our cupcake making marathon all-nighter, and was the companion cake for the sculpted bulldog groom's cake mentioned in our previous post. For our couple Kiera and Kraig, Rick designed a monstera leaf cake very different from designs we had seen before, which is usually the leaf lying flat all over the cake. For their wedding cake Rick and the Kiera desired an organic, carefree pattern where the leaves weren't so structured and yet had an elegant feel. Mission accomplished! Both the wedding cake and the bulldog groom's cake received plenty of compliments, and with our Guava Lava and Kona Toffee Crunch flavors, we know the guests had plenty to smile about. Their wedding colors were different shades of greens, ivories and natural khaki colors, and the monstera leaf figured prominently in the decor and invitation. Here are a few photos we took at the Mid-Pacific Country Club in Lanikai, where the wedding took place. The private club with its beautiful grounds overlooks the ocean and is perfect for a special celebration, as well as the ideal retreat before a long night of endless cupcake making.







Kiera and Kraig's cakes will be posted soon on cakelava.com along with plenty of other new cakes.

Mahalo to the tweeters who have joined us on twitter!

Doggy Style, and a Weekend of Insanity!

I'm trying to recall when exactly our weekend officially started because it's like one BIG, exhausting, yet beautiful, blur of events. Friday the entire day was spent working on cakes, emails, phone calls and preparing for the "I Love Kailua" town party on Sunday, which we participated in. Things started getting crazy on Saturday when we came into the studio in the morning and we both worked. Rick finished up cakes, did some sketches and I worked on emails and took some calls. We went back home to take a little nap before the marathon onslaught began. After napping, we picked up our wedding couple's bulldog groom's cake (shown above) and hawaiian-themed wedding cake and brought it over to the Mid-Pacific Country Club in Lanikai, which is a suburb located here in Kailua. After delivering the cakes and taking some photos we left and got a bite to eat then went home and changed and prepared for our all-nighter. We came back to the studio and proceeded to make batch after batch after batch after batch ... after batch ... of cupcakes, working through the night and into the early morning hours. Hundreds and hundreds ... and hundreds... of delicious cupcakes! for the 17th Annual "I Love Kailua" town party, which brings up to 10,000 people every year to our lovely little beach town, and we definitely wanted to be prepared. The "I Love Kailua" town party benefits the Lani-Kailua Outdoor circle, which is dedicated to preserving and beautifying Kailua by planting trees and making community improvements.

After making all the cupcakes, we got a couple hours of sleep before it was time for us to start setting up. The party officially started at 11am and ran until 4pm. We were allowed to start setting up at 10am and by 10:45am we already had people handing us scrip to purchase cupcakes. Running on adrenaline, motivation, and not much else, Rick and I proceeded to sell cupcake after cupcake after cupcake ... after cupcake ... We had a great response and people were blown away by the cakes we brought. Since our reputation is already pretty solid here, we met a lot of people who knew about us and came up to introduce themselves or commented to Rick how much they liked his work. We also saw quite a few of our clients, which is always nice! The temperature was about 80 degrees and SUNNY and we worked hard through the end of the event. Even after 4pm people were still wanting to buy cupcakes, but we had to break down our booth and leave right away because we had another event!

Back to the studio to drop everything off, started feeling a little worn out, and prepared to leave for our evening wedding at Lanikuhonua at 6pm. This was a wedding long in the works that we knew would be just gorgeous and we would see a bunch of vendors that we often work with. In this case that included Weddings by Grace & Mona, Angel de Armas, Chrissy Lambert Photography, Yvonne Floral, Showtime DJs and more. I should probably mention too that the wedding cake was 3 and a half feet tall! We arrived at Lanikuhonua, still running on adrenaline, and immediately saw the bride and groom. The bride looked at the cake and said "Oh my god, you guys, are you KIDDING me?!!" and both the bride and groom started gushing about the cake. As we walked over to the cake table, which looked amazing (thank you, Yvonne!), Chrissy Lambert was excited to photograph the cake and Rick had an immediate crowd of the couple's guests surrounding him. They were just blown away and Rick fielded question after question about the cake. Most of the guests were from L.A. and had seen awesome cakes before, but many said it was the coolest cake they had ever seen! It was colorful, fun and tall, and we are planning to show it as a Featured Wedding soon. On a day like Sunday when we were working almost around the clock with barely any sleep, it was a lot to take in, but we also agreed that it was a day unlike any other and making that many people happy with our cakes was definitely worth the effort. We took yesterday off (a rarity for us) and played and paid for it dearly today with cakes to work on, lots of emails and calls to answer, and another event tonight. It was a weekend of insanity but oh so worth it!!

Cutesy Whimsy Wedding Cake

Our wedding couple, Sou and Takako are completely adorable and we wanted them to have a super special wedding cake! I've been communicating with the couple long distance, and I do mean LONG distance. They live in Japan and were flying to Oahu for their wedding at the Halekulani hotel and hired us to make them a bright, whimsical, wonky cake. Other than a few photos they sent us for inspiration and the request for pink, yellow and white to be used in the cake, they left their wedding cake design completely up to Rick. Having never met Sou and Takako in person, Rick took into consideration some cake designs they liked and also the Japanese aesthetic of cutesy things and tried his best to give the couple what he thought they would want. Based on my communications with the super sweet couple I have a feeling they were probably pretty blown away by their cake. We hope they are enjoying a fabulous honeymoon and have a safe flight back to Japan. All the best to Sou and Takako!

Aloha to our new twitter followers! We don't tweet as much as some of you but we do when we can and are having fun with it. Have a wonderful weekend!

Rock On!

We had a lot of fun working on Luke's Fender guitar birthday cake, which we delivered on Tuesday night. Our client Ash loved the standing guitar Rick made for Tom (see Marchelle and Tom post) and wanted to surprise her boyfriend Luke with a Fender electric guitar for his 30th birthday. We were given the colors of red, black, silver and gold to work with and other than that, Rick could choose and make any guitar he wanted. Luke's cake felt right at home in the black and red colored movie venue where the party took place, surrounded by a tower of White Castle Burgers, chips and dip and plenty of other goodies suitable for a bunch of people about to kick back and watch a good flick. We didn't get to meet Luke but we hope he was Wow'ed by his special cake and had a very memorable 30th birthday!

Welcome To the Jungle!

We had planned to share our jungle safari themed birthday cake today, and then remembered it was Earth Day -- why not show happy looking animals communing with nature! Rick was given carte blanche on the jungle cake design and the end result was one of abundance. Lots of animals in a lush jungle scene. It was full of life and so delicious! The client selected our Peanut Butter Fudgey and Bananarama flavors for her son's special cake. The cake was very well received. When we walked up to the event carrying the cake, there was a camera snapping our picture and the guests started clapping. The applause was pretty nice, we gotta admit. We were smiling and blushing at the same time. The guests cleared the way long enough for us to place the cake down on the table and then surrounded the cake. Most said they had never seen anything like it before, followed by the inevitable "Ace of Cakes" comparison, which we hear frequently, and is often followed by "you even look a little like him" because Rick has a shaved head and a goatee, which he's had for over a decade. Rick is 6' tall and quite thin and as his wife, I find these comparisons amusing. Though not as amusing as his recent comparison to "Deal or no Deal" Howie Mandell, who also has a shaved head and a goatee.

See our portfolio of colorful birthday cakes on cakelava.com

Next Featured Wedding Sneak Peek - Leslie and Greg

All images courtesy of Amodo Photo, photography by Frank Amodo

It is pure coincidence that our current and next Featured Wedding on cakelava.com would have a bride named Leslie (Lesley) and take place at the Moana Surfrider Resort in Waikiki. We knew when we stepped into the reception room which was dressed in soft buttery yellows, and ivories and saw some of our favorite vendors working their magic that Leslie and Greg would be a Featured couple. This wedding was special to us in many ways, aside from having a great couple to work with. Leslie and Greg were married on December 30, 2008, right after our other couple Kyla and Jen. They were officially our last wedding of 2008, and a wonderful way for us to say goodbye to 2008 and look forward to a another vibrant year of events. It was also the last wedding we did with floral designer Nicole Lomas of Peony Floral Designs, before she and her husband moved to San Diego. Over the years we've been working with Nicole, Rick and I have been continually impressed by her floral compositions. She is an extremely talented floral designer and Hawaii will truly miss her! For Leslie and Greg, Nicole designed lush english garden style centerpieces which included peonies, english garden roses, hydrangeas, and tulips. Leslie's bouquet was calla lillies, which figured prominently in her 4-tier champagne and ivory cake Rick designed using inspiration from her wedding gown which had a delicate filligree pattern.

The elegant, English country style reception room looked gorgeous, it really felt like Spring was here and love was in the air, even though it was the night before New Year's Eve and there was an enormous decorated Christmas tree in the room.  We recall the buttery yellow color linen with a white overlay and the sweet hand-tied roses in the sash on the backside of the chairs and the guest name cards with the floral print on the side. Troy Michael Entertainment, one of our favorite DJ's provided the sounds to dance the night away. Our Featured Wedding images would not have been possible without photographer Frank Amodo of Amodo Photo whose images exquisitely captured Leslie and Greg's special day. We'd like to thank Frank for bringing our memories of our last wedding of 2008 back to life! We wish Leslie and Greg the best in their new life together!

See Leslie and Greg's Featured Wedding on cakelava.com soon, and don't miss your last opportunity to see Christina and Steve's wedding. From our Weddings page, click on "previously featured".














and tomorrow, a jungle animal themed cake you won't want to miss!

A Waikiki Wedding on the Terrace

Friday night's wedding took us into Waikiki, to the Hyatt Regency Waikiki Resort & Spa. This wasn't your typical hotel indoor ballroom wedding reception. Our bride Briana chose the pool terrace at the Hyatt, which overlooks Waikiki beach, to create an elegant outdoor environment for her ceremony and reception. Her wedding palette was just lovely -- soft sage and celadon greens, silver, pinks and accents of crisp white worked beautifully together. Les Saisons provided the gorgeous custom silk linens, Always Flowers did the floral designs, and we loved the use of the silver chivari chairs, which were a perfect option for the wedding colors. For Briana's wedding cake, Rick created an all white with silver accents floral vine design that covered the cake. It was quite stunning in person. The couple chose our Chocolate Dream and Lemon Pucker flavors for their wedding cake. After working long distance (Australia) on this wedding with the wedding coordinator, mother of the bride and the bride, we grew fond of all of them and are hoping they loved their cake as much as we enjoyed making it!










Aloha, til next time!

Gwen and Josh, of the "Gwen" Cake

All images provided by Gwen and Josh and courtesy of Chrissy Lambert Photography

The blog plan this week was to share more of our recent cakes and we headed down that path until we received an email from our bride Andrea finalizing her "Gwen" cake design. Having recently showcased Marchelle and Tom's wedding on the blog and enjoying taking that trip down memory lane, we decided to do the same for Gwen and Josh. With all the attention on the "Gwen" cake of late -- see yesterday's post for the backstory -- we contacted Gwen and asked if we could share her and Josh's wedding on our blog. The couple quickly responded and sent us more of photographer Chrissy Lambert's beautiful images than we could possibly show. We wanted to show their wedding largely because of the design of the event, which so perfectly complimented the colors and style of the cake. While the cake design is all ours, the look of this gorgeous wedding was brought together by a talented team of vendors including coordinator Dianna Shitanishi of Hawaii Weddings and Events, Debbie Hemingway of Designs by Hemingway, Naomi Lee of Les Saisons for custom linens, The Halekulani, Hau Terrace for location and Chrissy Lambert Photography. We hope you enjoy Gwen and Josh's wedding as much as we did. Once again, a big Mahalo to Gwen and Josh for sharing their special day with all of us!




























Join us next week as we reveal some of our newest cakes and our next Featured Wedding, by photographer Frank Amodo. Here's a little peek, before the "Sneak Peek". Image courtesy of Frank Amodo, Amodo Photo.


Enjoy your weekend!