Stephanie & Pete, Amazing Wedding Cake, Ridiculous Weather

I moved to Minneapolis in 1989 to go to the U of MN. My family is from the east coast, and moved to Wisconsin when I was three year’s old. My mom loves to tell the story that leading up to our move, everyone kept telling me that I was moving to a place that got a lot of snow, so when we got off the plane in mid July to move into our new house, my first words were “Where’s all the snow?”
Well, thirty-seven years later, I finally have the answer. It’s in Minneapolis.

And we love it…my Husband, the Goo, once timed a half our news cast during a run of the mill snowstorm, and they spent eighteen minutes covering the weather. Subtract commercials, and that left about six minutes for news and sports. And when a potential storm is on its way…the hype rivals that of the Superbowl lead up.

That’s why I typically don’t concern myself with weather forecasts. They hype it up to the level of “we’re all gonna die” and sometimes, the storm misses us completely.

That was certainly not the case on the day of Stephanie and Peter’s wedding.

Like I said, I’ve lived in Minneapolis for over twenty years. I’m used to driving in the snow. I had planned to make the St. Paul wedding cake deliveries myself, with Julia following me in her car. But, on my way to the shop, I called the Goo, and asked him to come drive for me. I’ve never done this before, in fifteen years of business…never. And I’ve delivered through some pretty nasty storms. Being the prince that he is, he met me at the shop, and it was definitely the right decision.

For those of you who haven’t driven in a blizzard, here’s the trick. No matter how high you have your windshield defrost set, the windshield wipers ice up. And they don’t do such a great job when they’re basically two sno-pops dragging across the windshield. The only way to fix this is to roll down your window, grab the wiper, pull it away from the windshield, and let it snap back against the glass to break the ice off. Well, if you’re 5’3” and have arms to match, this is impossible to do while driving. But with the Goo at the wheel, we were golden.

Let’s complicate things a little…this wedding cake was one of the nine cakes that were to be featured on Amazing Wedding Cakes on WeTV. So, we had a film crew caravan of cars behind us, and about 2 miles away from the reception, they ripped off the driver’s side wiper trying to snap the ice off the blade. The call came over the Walkie-Talkie that they needed to pull over. But we had a wedding cake to deliver, and it really isn’t the best idea to pull over on the highway during a blizzard. So we talked them into continuing for the last two miles with… wait for it…the driver hanging his head out the window. Ahh, dedication!

Well, Stephanie and Pete got their wedding cake, and were the most gracious of couples. The wedding was a success despite all of the obstacles that the weather put in their way.

Julia’s car spent the night at the reception site, it was hopelessly stuck after the time spent setting up the cake. We drove to the nearest auto parts store, where the crew got a new wiper, and headed back home via the backstreets (they had pulled the plows off the major highways). The snow was over waist deep at my house, but Great Wall Chinese Restaurant in my neighborhood, as usual, was open. Apparently, they don’t listen to weather forecasts either.
Thanks to Kemmetmeuller Photography for these fabulous images!