In Montana, most things are far apart. It’s a big state, and long distances are a fact of life, even in the cake business. Whether couples come across the country to get married here, or just up from Twodot, many of our wedding cake clients live away from Bozeman all or part of the time. So how to plan a dream cake from 200 or even 2000 miles away? Here is a great example from a Sweet Pea Bakery wedding in the works for later this summer.
Visual references sent from an out-of-state bride to aid in cake design.
In one envelope we have color, line, texture, style and context. There are many more details in the emails and notes from phone conversations added to their file in our database. This couple even sent in some relatives to do the cake tasting. We posted pictures of their taster cakes to the web to save them translation over the phone while they talked about their favorites. So, with two months to go we know quite a bit about what this couple, who we’ve met only briefly, hopes for in their wedding cake. And we have a system in place to get them what they want without fuss or compromise.
This next example is from a bride who is close enough to home that we’ve actually had a couple chances to sit down and talk design. She brought the invitations, too, but took the extra step of bringing her graphic designer to meet us!
Cake design ideas come in many forms
The designer is forwarding us the vector art used in the invitations. That complex pattern is built from only two repeating shapes, Carrie can scale these up to use as stencils for perfectly coordinated cakes. The printed samples will be used to match their colors, even the random sketches on a napkin help us better understand the couple’s wishes.
Our best trick for designing the best cake for each bride is no trick at all. We have developed a database to track event planning progress from the first e-mail until the cake is on the table.
From one simple worksheet we can link to all our correspondence, find contact info for all your vendors, get ingredient lists and allergens for any recipe, and print turn-by-turn directions to the venue. If you choose to decorate with ribbon, it tells us how much to buy so we don’t run short. It makes our pricing easy to predict and explain in clear terms. All these little details that can get overlooked during the planning process are there for us with the click of a mouse. You can confidently check cake planning off that long to-do list, and we can focus on what we do best. It’s more fun for all of us this way.
Carrie is currently available for weddings after Labor Day weekend this year through the holidays. Booking for the 2011 season will begin January 1st, but we are happy to schedule a consultation any time. Call the bakery at (406) 586-8200 or visit http://www.sweetpeabakery.net/weddings
