Kid-Friendly Wedding Fun

Remember those goopy white wedding cakes, the ones with flavorless, overly sweet Crisco icing and bland, pale cake? Thank heavens today's brides are thinking outside of the cake box!

Here's the wedding cake we guests enjoyed at the wedding of a young cousin of mine last weekend. The big cupcake on the top is the one the blissful couple cut and fed daintily to each other. It was obviously quite tasty, as they were licking their fingers afterward. The rest were fallen upon by the guests and consumed with gusto.

Top to bottom, there were lemon, snickerdoodle, carrot cake and chocolate cupcakes, some mini and some larger size to suit the various tastes and appetites. Each was prettily decorated to add to the festive air.

The numerous little kids at the wedding enjoyed the wide lawns to play in, the inflatable jumpy castle, the swing, the clown who painted tattoos on their arms and the goody bags filled with amusements for them that the thoughtful bride and groom provided. It turns out that it is possible to enjoy having young children at a wedding - you just have to give them plenty to do and a great venue to do it in! They also loved the kid-sized cupcakes; they slipped in between the grownups to seize and carry away their prizes.

Thanks to cousin Jan who shared some of the mini cupcakes with me, I got to taste them all. I can recommend this approach to wedding cakes - it's playful and joyous as well as providing variety for guests to choose from.

I'm hoping the goopy white wedding cakes are a thing of the past. Bring on the carrot cake, the snickerdoodle, the lemon, the chocolate, and let's get this party started!