Whirlwind of events!

There aren't quite as many weddings the first few months of the year as there are from April through October, but these months are always crazy busy with lots of other fun stuff to do. All the the recently engaged young couples are busy planning right now so we're having lots of meetings about making their wedding cakes. This is also the time for lots and lots of bridal events. On February 12th we attended West Manor Events open house at the beautiful West Manor Ballroom in Forest. What a magical evening and a wonderful opportunity for brides to see different flower arrangements,table settings, cakes and delicious food in an actual wedding setting. It really brings it all to life and of course the West Manor team really know how to throw a party! With three venues - West Manor Ballroom, The Trivium and City View the West Manor team will certainly have a space that suits your taste! Check them out at www.westmanorevents.com Thank you West Manor for sharing this evening with us!

On February 20th the Central Virginia Bridal Guide's Bride of the Year Luncheon was held at The Trivium in Forest. We were so pleased to be there again this year and meet many of the beautiful brides planning their weddings for this year and next. The winner, Whitney Bowers, received a honeymoon from Travelbugs as well as lots of other prizes and an article about her wedding in the next Central Virginia Bridal Guide. Check out Central Virginia Bridal Guide's website for info about up coming events. www.vabridal.com

Last night (February 24th) we were honored to attend Tresca on 8th's Debut and Reception at the wonderful Tresca ballroom at 8th and Commerce Street in downtown Lynchburg. Leecy and Tara have done a wonderful job getting this beautiful space ready for the upcoming wedding season. The beautiful decor and lighting last night really highlighted this unique venue. We wish our friends much prosperity with this fabulous site. I know they will make lots of dreams come true there. We are looking forward to delivering lots of wedding cakes there. Check them out at trescaon8th.com.

Coming up

March 14, 2010 -The Lynchburg Bridal Expo at the Holiday Inn Express downtown on Main Street. This is going to be a huge event, and if you are planning a wedding in the next couple of years you must come! Lots of great vendors, samples, doorprizes. Lots of great ideas. You have to be there. :) Visit www.lynchburgbridalexpo.com for more information. You can also see more on March 4, 2010 on "Living in the Heart of Virginia" with Tab O'Neil, whose guest will be the Bridal Expo event coordinator and owner of Capture it Photography, Kim Jennings.

April 17th - YWCA Church Street Bridal's open house at 626 Church Street in Lynchburg. Visit them at Church Street Bridal for more details.

April 18th - Central Virginia Bridal Guides Garden Party at the beautiful Babcock House Bed and Breakfast in Appomattox. Pick up a copy of the Bridal Guide for more info or visit www.vabridal.com or The Babcock House.

There are more events that I will post as they get close. Happy Wedding Planning!

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We're so honored!

Thank you to our past brides and grooms who voted for us to win this award. We are thrilled!

Lynchburg Living's Best of Lynchburg

So I was just over on Lynchburg Living's website voting for my favorite businesses in their annual "Best of Lynchburg" contest, when I noticed that some awesome person nominated "coffee cakes" for best desert. So it's spelled like the drink - I still think they meant us. People misspell it like that all of the time. I know you are all going there anyway to vote for your favorite amongst the many wonderful businesses we have in Lynchburg, so, while you're there, if you think we deserve it, we would appreciate your vote. THANKS!

Lynchburg Living Magazine's "Best of Lynchburg"

I just love, love, love weddings - but I can never be there so I just LOVE when someone sends me pictures of the happy couple enjoying their wedding (and their wedding cake)! Crystal George has posted Mike and Melissa's wedding pics from August 8th at the FABULOUS West Manor and I just had to share them with you. Thank you Crystal and of course CONGRATULATIONS MELISSA AND MIKE! Oh -Check out the cutie-pie kid eating cake! What a doll.

Crystal George Studios' Blog

I haven't been here in awhile. It's been a crazy busy summer - but fun. We've already started planning for another cruise in December so that light at the end of the tunnel is keeping me sane for now! :)

So...it's Friday. I have 4 wedding cakes to make so I'm out.

Oh the competition was fierce. There are so many awesome businesses in Lynchburg that it was crazy to think that little old me would win a small business of the year award. I was just thinking that since you can't get any smaller than our business that we might have a shot. We didn't win. It was a great honor to have been nominated and I'd like to thank my awesome bride Amy Hunt Lawson for the privilage!

More later. Running a little behind this week because of the holiday. I hope everyone had a safe and happy Memorial Day and remembered that the holiday is an occasion for us to remember all of those who have lost their lives in defense of this great country. I am thankful for their sacrifice every day, as well as our troups, veterans, firemen, police and first responders. God bless the USA!

Busy, busy, busy.

Oh to have more hours in the day! Been so busy making cakes and remodeling a real estate project and planting flowers and trying to squeeze in every other little thing that I want/need to do. It's challenging and fun. I'm having a blast. Hopefully the remodeling will be done in the next few weeks and I can focus on some things that have had to slide - like this blog.

Wedding season is kicking into high gear. I had 4 wedding cakes last weekend along with a couple of graduation and other cakes, 3 weddings this weekend and a birthday, grooms cake, bridal shower, and one or two others. I can normally do 3-4 wedding cakes per weekend unless they are very large. I'm so thankful for all of my customers and happy that so many people come back time and again to order my cakes.

Now for some really big news - I have been nominated for the Lynchburg Chamber of Commerce small business award to be announced on May 20th at a luncheon at the Hilton Garden Inn. There is a lot of great competition and I know I'm not likely to win (I'm the tiniest fish in a pretty big pond) it's still a fabulous thrill and honor to have been nominated. More coming soon on that - I'll let you know how I did. If you would like to go to the luncheon again it's May 20th from 11:30 - 1:30 at the Hilton Garden Inn on Wards Road. Admission is $20 for Chamber members and $30 for non-members. Reservations are required and should be made by May 15th - that's tomorrow - so call 434-845-5966 or email info@lynchburgchamber.org. Wish me luck! :)

Have a great day!

Natalie's bridal shower

Speaking of shopping themes... I did a cake last weekend for a bridal shower held at Boonsboro Country Club for Natalie. Today I got the sweetest email from her friend who planned the shower and happens to be a professional photographer. Her name is Patricia Hildebrand and she graciously allowed me to post some of her pictures. Here is one of them.



And....I'm blogging on Friday again....back to work! These wedding cakes won't make themselves. :)

One very popular theme for birthdays and bridal showers is shoes, accessories and shopping in general, so I thought I would post this picture of one of my recent cakes for just such a party.



Don't forget West Manor's open house this Sunday from 1:00 - 4:00. Enter to win $2000off of your wedding at west manor!

WOW! What a great day we had at the Lynchburg Bridal Expo on Sunday March 8th. It was a gorgeous day and there was a huge turnout for the show. I was happy to see a lot of brides there that I'm already working with on their wedding cake, and it was very nice to meet so many new ones. I'm sure everyone got a lot of ideas to help them with their wedding planning! It was so nice as always to spend some time with some of Lynchburg's great wedding vendors too!

The next event that we will be attending will be at West Manor's spring open house on March 29 (see previous post for information). Of course we are looking forward to that - we LOVE West Manor! Come out to see us - Free cake! :)

On April 18th we will be at the Montview Manor on the campus of Liberty University for Timeless Affairs event "Wedding Planning Made Simple". The hours for are from 9-4 with different vendors in the morning and afternoon hours (we will be there from 9am -noon). This event is by appointment only so please rsvp at www.timelessaffairs.com or call 434-509-2906.

I hope you all have been enjoying the beautiful days that we have been having. March is so unpredictable (10 inches of snow on Monday and 80 degrees on Saturday) so I guess there are still some cold days in store for us, but it sure is nice to see some signs of warmer days ahead.

West Manor's spring open house

I hope to see you there!

Be sure to check out the new "Hitched" issue of Lynchburg Living magazine -available in about a month. Of course there will be tons of valuable wedding planning information - plus an article featuring a cake by Coffey Cakes. We are very excited to be included in this fabulous publication and hope that you all will run out and get a copy!

We are also pleased to announce that we have been honored with the 2009 Brides Choice Award presented by Wedding Wire.




Thank you all for your support of our work!

plugging along

It's the middle of January and I might be getting a little caught up.....maybe. The actual weddings have slowed down a bit but - it's planning season! So we're staying very busy with birthday cakes and wedding cake meetings - we average about 7 meetings a week. I love meeting all the beautiful new brides and hearing all of their different ideas for their weddings. Such fun! I've already booked up for several dates during the summer but I still have lots of availability so give me a call so we can get together and talk about your wedding cake! :)

It's going to be a busy year.

Other than that - we have a few bridal shows coming up. We'll be at The Acedemy of Fine Arts on January 24th from 11-2:00 for Soiree's "Something Blue - a Bridal Affair". On February 7th we will be at the Inn at Trivium for the Central Virginia Bridal Guide's Bride of the Year Luncheon. You have to have pre-register for this show so call 434-237-9083 for information. On March 8th from 1-5:00 we will be at the Lynchburg Bridal Expo bridal show at Cattle Annie's. This is going to be a fabulous day so please be sure to come out for that. And on March 29th West Manor is having their spring open house - it's always a treat to spend the day with Sharon and the girls in the fabulous West Manor ballroom eating some of Chef Ken's awesome cooking! So there are lots of opportunities coming up to mingle with other brides, meet some of Lynchburg's awesome wedding vendors, get lots of ideas to help you in your wedding and eat some great food (and cake of course!).

See you there! :)

A little about our trip and then - Back to the grind

Wow - what a....month! Between preparing for our trip, taking the trip, Christmas and New years the month of December was pretty much a blur and flew by. I hate to see my life whizzing by me like that - I feel like I need to stop and smell a rose RIGHT NOW! But it was a wonderful month even if it does seem like a dream.

The trip was fabulous! There were gale force winds for most of our trip so the sailing was rough. I was VERY queezy the first night and was thinking that I might have made a mistake, but I was fine the next morning and didn't have any other sea-sickness through out our trip.

The instructors on board were awesome as expected. I had a class on painting with food colors with arthor Toba Garrett and two classes with Food Network Cake Challenge Judge and arthor Nicholas Lodge. I also sat in on some instructions from former ICES president Keith Ryder. I made some wonderful new cake friends including Diane Shavkin who I've looked up to for years.

Walking up and down that huge ship was a workout and even with a buffet for three meals a day and all of the snacks and room service that we could eat I only gained 1/2 a pound while we were gone! Cool! We visited Grand Turk which was a big mess from recent hurricanes - I mean it was a mess! Only the cruise center ( a bunch of stores in a group as you get off the boat) was intact and worth seeing and I wasn't there to shop. We did ride a jet ski in the ocean and do some quick snorkeling. Puerto Rico was nice - a lot of walking again and we got some great pictures of the old city and the forts. On St. Thomas we took a sky ride up to the highest point and got some great pictures, but other than shopping the attractions were fairly lame. On our last day we visited Half Moon Cay Bahamas and had the most fabulous day of all! We took a ride in a glass bottom boat and saw some nice reef formations and fish. We went PARASAILING! What a blast! I'm scared of heights and cried when I had to get up on some scaffolding to paint some high areas in my house, but I was not scared at all of parasailing. It was amazing! We got to swim in the beautiful blue waters that I thought I would never even see with my own eyes and really didn't believe the pictures that I'd seen - but it's really there! I do love the Bahamas! It was a wonderful, wonderful combination of work and pleasure and I hope we can work it out so we can go again next year.

Today Greg went back to work after having 21 days off so it's officially back to business as usual, and I've got some catching up to do.

I hope all of my friends had a wonderful and safe Christmas/New Years and I pray for a happy, healthy and prosperous 2009 for you all!

Wendy

Another Friday

Why do I always find myself blogging on Friday - my busiest day of the week. Beats me, but here I am again. Cake-wise today is a slow day. I only took one cake for today because tomorrow we are leaving for a week and I have to get the house and the shop cleaned up and pack my stuff. So what am I doing to that end.....sitting here blogging about it of course! :)

I'm an over planner - I spend WAY too much time trying to think of every detail and every single thing I might need while I'm away and any thing at all that I should do before I leave...luckily I don't leave often I guess. I think I'm in pretty good shape tho.....I'm not too nervous about getting it all done - thanks to 3 months of freaking out about it - but does Greg appreciate my 3 months of freaking out so we can have a smooth getaway- prolly not...

We're very excited about our trip. It's a business trip with several celebrity decorators there to teach a few classes, but we're going somewhere warm....with swimming pools and beaches...casinos and ice cream bars, ahhhh the price we pay for knowledge, the self sacrifice, the selfless giving of myself and my ......oh whatever - nevermind - I don't think you're buying it.

We will be back before Christmas so if anyone needs me please hold on until December 21st and if you need me right away please call me because I have two meetings the first day back and I'm sure there will be a plethera of emails and phone messages to attend to and I WILL BE BEHIND. Besides, it's Christmas week and I will still have shopping to do!

Have a great week y'all!

How early should I order my wedding cake

I hear this question quite often and there is no cut and dried answer but this - it depends on when you are celebrating and how many other people are celebrating that same day and how early THEY order THEIR cake. That helps - right?

Well - if you are planning a June wedding and think you can follow the the advice that many of the wedding guides offer of ordering your cake 4 - 6 months before your wedding then you might be dissappointed when you start making calls. April - October are very busy wedding months and many of the dates throughout this period are booked up to 1 year in advance so if you are planning your event during this time you should book your vendors as early as possible or you risk not getting your first choice. Of course it never hurts to call and ask about a date even though you feel it might be too late, because sometimes things get cancelled and a date might open up at the last minute. Winter months are not quite as busy and even last minute ordering is often available.

During the Thanksgiving/Christmas holidays many couples come together who are seperated throughout the year - whether because of college or a job in another area. This holiday gift giving season and time of togetherness is of course the perfect opportunity to get engaged so there are usually a LOT of couples planning their weddings after Christmas. It is always a good idea to get as much of your planning as possible done before the new year to avoid this rush.

Remember that even if you meet with your vendors and are told that the date is available, you are not formally on the books unless you have signed a contract and placed a deposit to save your date. Many people leave the consultation without booking and when they return the date is no longer available. Of course you should discuss your decisions with your family and be sure that you are comfortable with your choice of vendor, but it's important to keep in mind that the date is not being held during this time unless you have been specifically told that it is.

Happy wedding planning.

Ahhhh Fridays - hustle day. This is the day when everything has to come together and all of the weekends cakes must be decorated. I have red gumpaste roses to finish for a wedding tomorrow, and jewels to make for a jewelry box cake.

Things have slowed down quite a bit as they usually do this time of year. Everyone is focusing on Thanksgiving and Christmas and not planning as many weddings. I use this time to do all of the many things that I neglect during the busy wedding season. Right now I'm re-doing my website and almost have that completed. I just have a few more gallery pages to get done, hopefully I'll finish that up before Thanksgiving.

We're not hosting Thanksgiving at our house this year, so I don't have to worry about all of the shopping, cleaning and cooking that goes along with that. I'll miss it tho. We're going to my in-laws so I know that is going to be fabulous! My mother in law, Sheilia, always makes that green jello salad that my Mama use to make - I LOVE that, but I never make it because Greg doesn't like it. WOO HOO - I get to eat lime jello salad in a couple of days *doing happy dance*.

I'l looking forward to the black Friday sales next week. I've got to have an MP3 Player. It's weird.....I didn't care about them for the longest time then BAM! I've GOT to have an MP3 player. So - hoping for good sales on those next week.

It's hard to believe that we're putting up the Christmas tree in a week. Time sure does fly when you're busy. I don't care for the cold, but *shrug* it'll be summer soon! :)

In the spirit of Thanksgiving I just have to say that I'm thankful for my wonderful husband, my family and friends, my home and my pets. I'm thankful for every beautiful couple who trusted me with the cake for their special day and every one else who allowed me to make a cake for their special event. I'm thankful for my health and that I was born in the greatest country in the world. God bless America!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Stay safe!

Catching up

It looks like it's been 4 years since I established this blog and made my first entry. Well - it's been a busy 4 years. LOL! We have been making a lot of cakes and meeting so many beautiful brides - many of whom keep in touch even after several years which is really a blessing for me. We've met lots of other friends via cake plus met so many of the wonderful wonderful wedding vendors in the area. We are so blessed in the Lynchburg area to have some really great venues, caterers, photographers, florists, bridal shops and other vendors whom are not only very reputable and skilled in their areas of expertise, but they are great people whom I'm thrilled to call friends.

I'll try to keep up with this blog a little better and share more of my work with any of you who might be interested. Thanks so much for visiting!

My first post

Well, I've heard about blogs for awhile and thought they were kind of cool, but don't really know what I'm going to do with one. We'll see I guess! :)