The wedding was April 4. I baked the two layers for the cake on March 31, wrapped them in saran. I made the frosting that day and put it in a sealed plastic container for the journey. I was able to find a 9-inch ceramic cake stand at a local shop. Although it said "Treat Yourself" on the edge, the 8-inch cake board covered it nicely.
I assembled the cake on April 3. I had a problem with the frosting, which I could not get to be spreadable. It was a fight, even with a crumb coat to get it on smoothly, and the sides were not as smooth as I would have liked. Belatedly, I have realized that I should have brought along a larger bowl to re-whip the frosting, in order to incorporate air. I feel like an idiot for not figuring this out earlier.
However, the cake looked great, and I had the top nicely smoothed, which was good, because the cake-topper was long and thin (a cut out from a thin piece of wood), so everyone would be looking at the top.
The bride and groom said it tasted great! I also received compliments on how it looked. (Whew!) It was slightly challenging for them to cut because they were using one of those wedding knife and server sets, which are just not that great, but they managed to produce slices that looked like slices.
I had bought a pair of cardboard cake boxes (Celebration) from Michaels and used one to box up the cake for them afterwards. I could only get 12-inch (unless I wanted to buy 25 8-inch boxes!) As the bride's mother and I were trying to figure out how to keep it from sliding around (I had used a Tupperware dish without a lid on the way over), I spied commercial coffee filters in the reception hall kitchen. We set the cake on one, pushed up the sides around it, then wadded a couple filters around the sides for stability.
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