And Nobody Noticed It Was a Fake Cake | Hacker News Reader

And Nobody Noticed It Was a Fake Cake

nytimes.com

80 pointsCaliforniaKarl173 comments

Yes, non-edible cakes made of light, cheap materials like styrofoam are routinely displayed at weddings and other ceremonies. One of the layers might be soft, allowing for fake-cake cutting.

The hosts know the cake is fake. Many of the guests know the cake is fake. After cake-cutting, the fake cake often remains on display while everyone eats slices of real cake brought in from a kitchen.

No effort is made to pretend that the cake on display is real. It has come to be understood, accepted, and expected by society that there should be a cheap sculpture of a cake on display and that everyone should act as if this cheap sculpture is a real cake during the ceremony.

How did we, as a society, arrive here?

The same reason people live in cheap houses with crappy aluminum siding on 3 sides, and fake brick material on the front. The same reason people wear knock-offs of designer clothing. The same reason cars play fake engine noise over their stereo system. The same reason people rent Ferraris for the day. The same reason people go on "vacations" where they spend 5 minutes at each destination taking selfies.

People care more about the image of something rather than the actual thing. Authenticity is now something to be faked and posted to Instagram.

Of all of your examples, the one that comes closest to matching fake cakes is the fake engine noises that many vehicles play over speakers. A key difference is that most consumers are unaware that their car's engine noise may be fake, and if they find out they feel defrauded and tend to get upset.[a] The Washington Post calls fake engine noise the auto industry's "dirty little secret."[b]

In all your other examples, consumers are at least getting something of value. Cheap houses provide actual housing, at less cost. Knock-off clothes provide actual nice-looking clothing, at less cost. Rented Ferraris provide the actual enjoyment of driving a Ferrari, for less cost. Taking selfies on vacation spots provide some people with a temporary superficial pleasure from "showing off" to their friends.

What value does fake food provide when it is used only for display and no effort is made to pretend it's real?

[a] For example, see the comments here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lQPc9VXBzk

[b] https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/americas-bes...

Thanks for your analysis. The common theme I’m going for is that people are choosing something that looks opulent over actual opulence, where there is a third alternative: choosing something real but not as opulent. People could choose the less luxurious-loooking house, or the store brand clothing but narcissism, vanity and the constant need to self promote won’t let them.

I once worked with a guy who probably made close to what I made (similar title/seniority), but he lived in a very affluent neighborhood and loved to mention it whenever the opportunity even slightly arose. I ended up needing to drop something off at his house once (he was out on an extended sick leave) and when he greeted me I had a look behind him into the house. It was totally empty! He probably slept on a cot in one of the 5 unused and unfurnished bedrooms. He was a total phony!

I think we can agree that the examples I brought up represent a small fraction of the phoniness we see all around us—they were just the few that came to mind while typing. It’s an epidemic as far as I’m concerned.

Yes, I see what you mean... and agree with you:

There seems to be much faking of authenticity and faking of opulence today.

:-(

PS. Your comments remind me of the "Rich man in the car paradox" -- see #3 here: http://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/the-psychology-of-mone...

Thanks for the link! Excellent read

Fake cakes provide themed decoration, just like the fancy lace curtains or floral centerpieces that are also common at weddings. It's basically the exact same reasoning you gave for knockoff clothes.

Hey, renting a Ferrari for the day is sometimes just a way to drive a Ferrari once!

Yeah, the last thing I'd want is to be surrounded by people. I want open road!

> Authenticity is now something to be faked

See also: fake hardwood/marble paint effects applied to pine, in Victorian era houses.

Versailles Palace has a number of rooms with trompe l’oeil marble. Authenticity has always been something to fake.

Do some cars really play fake engine noises on the speakers?

Yep. It's pretty much industry standard on mid-range performance cars and trucks. Many manufacturers are moving to smaller I4 and V6 turbocharged engines on models that traditionally had big V8s. These smaller engines provide great efficiency and good performance, but they're much quieter and blander-sounding than the old V8s. Subtle digital augmentation of the engine note restores some of the feeling of performance at trivial cost.

https://www.caranddriver.com/features/faking-it-engine-sound...

https://www.ford-trucks.com/articles/f-150s-fake-engine-nois...

I was under the impression that some electrics and hybrids in electric mode played simulated engine noise through speakers to both alert nearby pedestrians that the vehicle is moving and to reassure the driver that it is operating normally.

I wouldn't put it past a manufacturer or aftermarket parts maker to play "vroom vroom" noises over the sound system at speeds too low for the driver to actually hear anything from the passenger compartment. If you can put an aluminum spoiler on a stock Honda Civic, you can put an engine noise simulator on your sound system.

The Jaguar I-Pace does this [1]. It's the stupidest thing.

[1] https://electrek.co/2018/03/07/jaguar-i-pace-artificial-moto...

Some BMWs do this: https://www.autoblog.com/2011/09/23/active-sound-design-enha...

Your comment is absolutely correct, except for one word: "now". Humans didn't radically change in the last several thousand years. We have always been this way.

Perhaps by watching lots of home videos on the internet or TV of people hauling massive tiered wedding cakes around, only to drop them or for a tier to give out and the whole thing to fall over?

As pretty and traditional as they are, they aren't nearly as practical to cut for a large crowd, especially once it's fallen on the ground, and nothing tops off the single largest event you'll host and pay for in your life like disappointing all of your guests.

I can honestly say that, at a wedding, I am never excited for the cake. It usually looks amazing and tastes like industrial lubricants.

I think you may have eaten a fake cake. I read about them somewhere.

I agree. However, at my own wedding I insisted there should be a cake. This is basically the only thing I insisted on - I kept saying that we're not actually married unless there's a cake.

Because weddings are complicated, I'm pretty sure I never got a slice of that cake.

Most American wedding cakes are terrible. Two reasons: the one discussed in the article is that often cakes are frozen to be decorated and stored, and so they're already stale by the time the wedding happens, and the second is that many American cakes just don't taste good. A sad byproduct of nutrition fads and pseudoscience combined with low levels of culinary discernment.

I think the biggest factor by far is that these cakes are decorated with "Fondant".

Which is like edible sculpting clay. It's technically edible but tastes like garbage. Buttercream makes a delicious cake but it is very difficult to mold some of the decorations people are requiring.

I wanted a fun "Batman" cake like this for my son's birthday party.

https://www.cta.ae/163-large_default/funny-block-batman-cake...

The bakery wants almost $600 for this cake. I think that is part of the reason we are seeing a "fake cake" trend.

There are also compromises made on the frosting so that it doesn't melt at room temperature. Fake cakes let you serve cakes that actually taste good.

American cake is in general very good - I'm not sure where you're comparing it to - it's the cupcakes that are bad.

I once delivered a huge four layer wedding cake. That delivery was the most tense 45 minutes of my life.

There are certain abilities we speculate that differentiate us from animals. I think the ability to abstract concepts separate from direct reality is among them. The ability to exist in symbolic space is a source of great advancement in humanity, but also of great tragedy.

That was how me and my wife ended up not cutting a cake in our wedding ceremony.

After 5yrs I love that girl

>How did we, as a society, arrive here?

It is only one of thousands of insane customs we have, but there have always been insane customs, they just kinda change in a random walk.

At my wedding we had pies. They were all real and lasted all of 5min once they were laid out.

I cannot fathom the desire to have a fake version of anything at your wedding.

I'm not sure many of us have arrived there.

In my experience, 90% of the things you see on a wedding are fake or staged.

Last year I got married in Taiwan, I got to pick between Cake Cutting, or a giant pyramid of glasses. I picked cake thinking I get cake.

So come wedding day we have this giant cake next to the stage, we do the cake cutting and we leave.

My best friend at the wedding was shocked I had such a large cake, he was telling people at the table it was huge, my group of friends informed him it was fake, he didn't believe them.

So he got up in front of everyone, nervously walked across the room to inspect the cake, touched it and realised there was dust on the lower pieces and it was hard, then he went to see my father in law to confirm if it was fake or not.

Well it turned out the only real bit was the top bit which was super cheap and not edible, just show for cutting. He was disappointed he wasn't getting cake, after the wedding my wife informed me I wasn't getting cake and I was sad. :(

Apparently this is the norm in Asia.

A friend who lives in Singapore attended his first Chinese wedding last month. He kept saying that they had a HUGE cake that they never fed to any guests. He kept waiting for the cake to make its way to his table, but it never did.

He kept saying that the cake must have been a fake, but I never believed him.

And yet, here we are

Also the norm in (parts of?) the Balkans. Typically a cake for cutting, another cake (or several kinds) served in slices afterwards.

Really? Which parts?

I am from Slovenia and never heard of this. Reasonably certain it is not common in Croatia either.

I'm from Bulgaria and I've also never heard of this... Attended a lavish wedding last spring, the cake was quite real and quite delicious!

Same in Greece.

wtf

Got married in Taiwan > Norm in Asia.

That's a huge jump mate.

Might have skipped a couple of steps there, buddy. It was probably more like:

Got married in Taiwan > Was surprised about the cake not being real > Asked some Taiwanese friends if this was normal > Friends say yeah, and not just in Taiwan > Really, what other places do this? > Norm in Asia

> That's a huge jump mate.

I live in Singapore and after speaking to people about this, I'm told its the norm, at-least in Taiwan, China, Singapore, Vietnam.

Can confirm for Thailand and Cambodia as well. Honeymoon pictures are typically of the couple being photoshopped on pictures all around the world as well.

(Got married in Cambodia, got fake cake and said pictures as well)

Norm for Japan as well.

People forget that about 2.5B Asians live in the Indian sub-continent and Middle-East

There are no cakes at Indian weddings

Ok so I asked my co-workers.

Muslims = 'no there is no such custom'

Hindu = 'we have, its 100% cake, no fake'

Christian = 'we have cake'

Cakes at actual Hindu weddings is almost never a thing. You might have them before the wedding - at the engagement for instance. But weddings are almost always filled with Indian sweets

Are you sure? I literally just googled and the first thing that came up was:

> http://thebigfatindianwedding.com/2014/the-essential-guide-t...

> Many modern Hindu weddings will also have a giant, tiered cake at the reception that the couple cut and do that whole cake-face-smear thing. This is an obvious Western influence, but you can keep it in the right cricket-field at least by doing something like a mehndi or chai-infused cake. Just a suggestion.

Living in India for 30+ years. I am hearing this for the first time. In my state in South India, I am 100% sure there is no cake at any stage of the wedding for Hindus or Muslims.

I'm just going by what my co-workers say. I've personally never been to India. But maybe it's a new thing. Some do it, most don't.

My original comment about it being the norm tho, would be better worded as: 'In Asia where weddings have cake, it seems to be the norm that the cake is often fake'

Does Indian cuisine (and I realize that I'm sweeping a lot of complexity under the rug) include cake?

As far as I know, cake is not part of Indian cuisine. I am from the state of Kerala (South India). All the bakeries here sell a few types of cakes.

Your question made me curious and I started searching for history of cake in Kerala and came across this: https://www.thebetterindia.com/125658/kerala-mambally-bapu-t...

https://m.facebook.com/tellydiary/posts/600462363372968

Looks like it started in 1880s.

I am big fan of plum cakes that we get in Kerala.

Predominantly not. Traditional Indian sweets and desserts tend to be milk-based puddings, deep fried items or soft candies similar to fudge, caramel or marzipan. You can't really bake a cake in a tandoor.

Not really. But cake is a part of birthday celebrations and you'll find bakeries selling cake virtually everywhere.

Been to a dozen Indian weddings (in the US and India). At the weddings in India, no cake. At all of the weddings in the US, there was cake, regardless of the couples' religion(s). But they were all real cakes; after the couple made the first cut, people lined up to watch the caterers cut the rest of the cake and grab pieces as they were laid out.

Lived all my life in India. I'm 30, married, and as are all my friends. There was no cake at any wedding I've ever attended.

From your own link:

"Western wedding cakes, along with Western pastries like macarons, are becoming more and more common at weddings"

Are becoming popular. Though I doubt what metric they used to measure that

Have never seen cake in a Hindu wedding. This is the first I’m hearing about it.

I assure you, people do not forget that more than a billion people live in India.

I've seen people make sweeping statements about "Asians" without including Indian people at all.

For instance, I often hear comments like "Asians don't consume much dairy" when they're actually talking about Chinese/Koreans/Japanese people.

In American English, "Asian" is a shorthand for "East Asian". In British English, "Asian" is a shorthand for "South Asian".

For example, i don't think there is anyone with an East Asian background in Asian Dub Foundation. And the Asian Cultural Centre in Oxford distinguishes between four kinds of Asian ethnicity, all South Asian, and Chinese:

http://www.asianculturalcentre.org.uk/new.htm

So i tend to think that this usage is not a mistake, but an idiom which differs across the Atlantic.

Many people think of India and the rest of their side of the Himalayas as a different cultural subcontinent from Asia, much like Europe over the Urals. It's OK.

Every definition of Europe I am familiar with defines the area as east of the Urals. What bits of Europe are on the other side? Were you perhaps thinking of the area south of the Carpathian chain?

It depends. ie one dictionary definition:

Asian

1. belonging to or relating to Asia or its people

2. in the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, belonging to or relating to China, Japan, or countries near them

3. in the UK, belonging to or relating to India, Pakistan, or countries near them

Essentially, one definition of "Asian" in the English-speaking world is "the people from Asia that have historically immigrated to our country".

yes, basically.

I've seen people make sweeping statements about "Asians" without including Indian people at all.

I think that's a side effect of changing the usage of "Oriental" ("Oriental is a rug, not a person.") Okay, that's fine, some (many?) find it offensive, so we'll quit using the word that way. But we forgot to have a replacement word. So now instead of "Oriental" we have "Asian" to describe folks from the more eastern parts of Asia. And we're left with "Indians" and "Asians", even thought that's not entirely accurate.

In American English, the continent is split in three: "West Asia", "South Asia", and "Asia".

In high school I worked banquets for a major hotel chain - mainly setting up for weddings receptions and conferences. I only saw a handful of real tiered cakes in the hundred or so I worked.

What was more normal to see was a real and very well made top tier. This was for the cake cutting pictures and for the bride and groom. The remaining 5-6 tiers were identically decorated styrofoam.

After the cake ceremony, we wheeled the rest into the back, tossed it in a closet for the caterer to pick up, and served sheet cake.

My mother has been a florist for 40 years and this is totally normal and has been for generations. I don't understand why this article exists. Everything old is new again?

I've seriously never heard of this, and am middle aged and married with kids, and lots of married friends.

A few friends had 2-3 tiered cakes, but they were always real cakes, just quite boring internally (plain vanilla sponge). At most, there were posts through the middle to round pieces of cardboard/wood/something in between the layers for support, for one wedding I went to. Most others were just big elaborate "normal" cakes.

I always assumed the crazy big American wedding cakes on TV were at least mostly real, maybe with supports and levels to structure it.

I've been at some weddings in Poland, and I never knew. Now I wonder whether we don't do that here, or it was me who was just not paying attention.

I suppose this article exists because other people are surprised too.

It's sort of a profile of a local business.

http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

There are places on this planet where not everything is a cheap Simulacrum.

I can't say I'm surprised learning about a new one from the USA Theme Park though.

Sadly this doesn’t surpise me and paints perfectly into the bigger picture of today’s america - home of deception.

that oriental Chineese soup is made by third generation americans that look like asians but never been to or heard a single chinese word. They got ingredients from local Cali’s market.

That CVS 100% natural aloe vera? It doesnt have any traces of real alovera at all!

Crab meat? I dint think so; its all immitation made from eatable sponge.

That naural honey? Its all high fructose corn syroupe.

The list go on and on ;( so sad that we as a society in whole accept this state of affairs ;(

I think you may want to re-evaluate your cynicism. If you read the article they mention that baked tiered cakes for weddings are stale and mostly ineadible. I can believe this. I have baked a few layer cakes and anything more than a few thin layers (enough to make a good topper) is a serious challenge. This is pragmatism and guest enjoyment over deception.

I’d take the fresh sheet cake over a week old repeatedly frozen and thawed cake.

> baked tiered cakes for weddings are stale

Here's a radical idea then: let's stop deceiving guests they are eating such a cake.

Or, just eat the cake and move on with your life.

The cake is a lie. I can't eat it, that's the point.

> that oriental Chineese soup is made by third generation americans that look like asians but never been to or heard a single chinese word. They got ingredients from local Cali’s market.

So long as they enjoy the soup, why does anything else matters?

I never got the why Asian Americans are so adamant about exclaiming the superiority of authentic Asian food. We get it: American Chinese food is not the same.

> that oriental Chineese soup is made by third generation americans that look like asians

Huh, okay, this is a genuinely new kind of racism to me.

About ten years ago my then-girlfriend asked my mother (a retired baker) and me to make a cake for her cousin's wedding. We proposed some recipes to the bride and groom, they chose one, told us how many guests they were expecting. They accepted our quote so we went ahead with the whole hog, three tiers, chocolate leaves and everything; I show up a couple hours before the reception to stack the tiers in place and add the decorations, gold dust and all the rest. But I get to the table and there's another cake! We'd never considered the possibility that we weren't making a "wedding cake", but the bride's family was under the impression we were just making a "cake for the wedding" and they were responsible for buying a "wedding cake" (in this case real, but flavour not a priority).

That must have been awkward. It sounds like you have them a good price if they didn’t question your price.

I'm sure I charged very little on top of the ingredient cost since I was an amateur (my mother just provided some guidance, really) and they were family.

Two wedding cakes it is.

I wonder if this is a US-only phenomenon. I've been to a number of weddings in Poland.

The cake is real!

They don't wheel it back to the kitchen for cutting. It's served right there in the middle of the reception hall. I guess it is less elegant than a stream of plated cake slices flowing out of the kitchen. However, you know what you are eating.

Can anyone share their experience?

I got married in the US but had the traditional French cake: the "Pièce Montée", a tower of cream puffs that are glued together with caramel. It satisfies both the flashy tower requirement, and is relatively easy to dish out since it's just a matter of pulling it apart, serving 2-3 cream puffs per person.

And it tastes way better than the US cakes which are glorified pound cakes with tasteless super-sweet icing.

http://img.over-blog-kiwi.com/1/29/25/37/20150328/ob_d45696_...

FWIW a pièce montée refers to any large/"architectual" pastry, so a tiered cake would be considered a pièce montée.

The specific dessert you're talking about is the croquembouche. Delicious, but the caramel ones are so damn sticky.

FWIW an other common option for pièces montées is to use multiple cakes on supports, which avoids the structural issues and limited edibility of a tiered cake, and offers more flexibility (e.g. depending on layout you may be able to use cakes with pretty different looks and ingredients, or you can create pretty cool-looking scenes).

Netherlands reporting in: the cake is not a lie.

Wedding cakes here are always made on the day of the party. A stale, frozen cake (like in the story) would definitely raise eyebrows.

We picked our cake based on flavour after a tasting session at the baker and it was then created and finished to our "specifications", so it looked and tasted great. We ate it all!

IMHO the best cake is made the day before, for the moisture to spread just right throughout all the "bread" parts, then dressed the day of serving.

That's true for the nice layered cakes so common in parts of Europe (my favorites are the Finnish cakes with a sponge-cake layer and then a lot of berries, maybe bananas or kiwis, other fruits, cream). I think there is less moisture-spread with a buttercream frosting and an American sponge cake. The two sponge recipes are quite different: the Finnish layer cake has much more in common with Passover cakes that don't use leavening and only use, for instance, potato flour; the American sponge cake uses butter and wheat flour and baking powder for leavening. Somehow there is a different effect to moistening such a cake with juice or liqueur, as one commonly does with the Finnish sponge cake.

Ok. Now I'm hungry.

Same in the UK. I think people would ask for their money back if the cake wasn't real (and they hadn't asked for it on purpose). I even had to store a tier of my friends cake as they couldn't fit it in their own fridge!

I think it depends. When I got married, we had the option of having tiered one with lower levels fake and sheet cake cut behind the scenes for the majority of the guests, or full tiered cake.

We had a full tiered cake, no fake parts involved. If I remember correctly, downside to non fake tiered cake is that you are limited by types of tiers you can have, "softer" cake types cannot be used as one of the lower tiers.

Oh, and it's cheaper to have fake lower levels.

I've personally made a wedding cake (once, and never again - too much work), and they were correct: The softer cakes cannot be used that way. The cake itself needs structural integrity. Even with supports, you run the risk of the cake collapsing on itself if it does not.. No one wants that. Most box cake mixes won't do, though I know folks use them. I wouldn't take the risk.

That said, I still don't actually understand why some are so tasteless.

Germany here. Have been to several weddings including my own, the cake was always real. Typically 1-3 tiers depending on the crowd, the first slice is traditionally shared by the groom and bride (feeding each other) after cutting, then the rest is cut and served by staff.

That said, the fondant and icing is pretty disgusting and the cake itself is usually just "okay", but cake is cake.

Reporting in from Denmark, where multi-tier wedding cakes are definitely real, and definitely eaten straight from being cut at the table. The slices may not be picture perfect, but they are damn tasty.

In my wedding in Istanbul, it was 39°C outside, and we had to choose between a fake cake or no cake ceremony because of health concerns. We chose the fake cake. Didn't know it was a thing before.

Mexico: Weddings here use starter, main dish and dessert, and some of them use the cake as dessert. So the cake here is real. But just the last weekend we attended a wedding and the cake was never cut. "Must be fake" said my wife. The american culture is very influential here, so maybe the fake cake is destined to replace the real one.

Ireland here. Never heard of a fake cake. Had an amazing Bailey's and chocolate biscuit cake for my own wedding.

US here, I'd never heard of a fake cake before this article. Reading other threads, however, it actually seems to be more common outside the US than inside, and the fact that I've never heard of them here seems to mean little, since many other people have.

Australia here and I've never seen a fake cake.

Same in Italy.

And it better be good!

It says a lot about the couple's taste.

Wedding cakes are such an unnecessary expense - I’m not going to say a rip-off because the impressive looking ones clearly take a ton of time to make - but if you don’t care about them looking like “amazing one of a kind” cakes a regular bakery can make super tasty non-sheet cakes for a reasonable amount.

We used the sadly defunct sweet inspiration in SF (sf rent prices happened afaik) and it was I think 35-40/each for three cakes which was fine.

Venue was still the biggest expense - I think all up we were somewhere in the 5-10k range which was apparently “cheap” o_O

> Wedding cakes are such an unnecessary expense

That fits with many of the other wedding expenses then, I guess. Obligatory comedy clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gimiDBAK2wA

It's insane how much money some people spend on weddings. All of the ones we've had in my family have been much more low-key type parties, just getting the families together and having some good food and drink together.

I would hate to be at one of those stuffy "high-class" super expensive weddings. Just let me sit down with friends and family over a nice dinner, maybe a few speeches and silly songs, and then lounge afterwards with a few beers and shoot the breeze.

Weddings in general are just a huge waste of money. Why put people into debt to start their lives? I don't want that burden put on parents either. Keep it simple.

We went in with that approach - we got married earlier this year in a lovely little restaurant surrounded by 30 of our friends and family. The venue was happy to have us as long as we bought roughly as much food/booze as they would normally sell. We had the whole kit and kaboodle there, and because there was only 30 of us they could go all out on food - it was some of the best food I've ever eaten. We had a great, intimate night and walked out with no debt. Wouldn't change it for the world.

The struggle comes when you have large families. Who do you cut? At this point in my life, I'd rather just elope to the justice of peace.

Yeah, we said siblings, parents, and grandparents only. Went ruthless on it.

I got married down at the court house during my lunch break. Invested what we would have otherwise wasted on tradition-worship.

We felt it important to mark the occasion - we'd been together nearly a decade, and we're not the sort to go places or do things (we took our first going away vacation with the honeymoon), so we felt it was important to us, but equally fair to just get er done and move on.

It's good for the economy, and purely voluntary (if you ignore the manipulative marketing indoctrination).

When you meet the girl of your dreams, let me know how voluntary the rest of your life is.

Yes. Weddings are such a ridiculous waste of money that it boggles the mind.

In my region, it is customary for the guests to give an envelope to the newlyweds, with the sum of money somewhat approximating the marginal costs of the guests' presence on the event. That is, if all the guests were nice and following the custom, the newlyweds would have recouped a big part of their expenses. In other words, a modern wedding is basically a process of transferring significant amounts of money from the guests to the caterers, photographers and venue owners.

Capitalism at its best.

Weddings are inherently a party, so it's not surprising that some are extravagant. What world do you want to live in where there is no extravagance or anything extra?

It's a ceremony and party that is paid for. If you see it as a process of transferring money you are missing something quite important.

My wife and I married at the town hall with our parents and siblings as guests.

The only expense was the dress and dinner after and it totaled about 10000 NOK (€1000) so it doesn't have to be that expensive :)

We didn't have cake.

It's not a "modern" tradition.

Transferring wealth/power was the main reason weddings were created in the first place

Yeah, but that was supposed to be a transfer between families involved; currently, it's a transfer from families to third parties in the wedding industry.

How are the guests supposed to have any sort of idea what the wedding budget and number of attendees is?

No, you only need to have an idea of the ballpark figure for a seat at a table. Then you bump it up by 20% to 50% and apply a multiple related to your own circumstances and level of personal connection to the guest. Then you buy a gift worth around that or just give them money in an envelope. (Some couples make their preferences known in this regard, but generally speaking I would say that giving a well-chosen gift is nicer than just giving money.)

It is not quite the algorithmic process I have described, though. It is a matter of custom and manners and therefore people arrive at the appropriate behaviour mostly unconsciously.

I assure you that if you personally do not have any idea about this, your +1 does.

> generally speaking I would say that giving a well-chosen gift is nicer than just giving money

I feel this is sort of a thing that's false, but you're required to believe it. Looking at it from the receiving end, money is worth more than gift, because a gift will likely be useless, or duplicate, or at best it will lock down the couple's ability to get the equivalent they want (I give you a good toaster you don't like; you'll be inclined to keep it, even though you'd prefer to buy a different one yourself). Money is the best gift, because it's no-strings-attached.

I definitely noticed that the shift of preference from gifts to money is happening in the cultural sphere I live in. Of course things may be different elsewhere.

That's the thing. A bad gift is worse than money, but a good gift - something that the couple actually wants and would buy - is better because it (a) shows consideration and thoughtfulness and (b) saves the couple the time it would take to go out and buy the item. This is the principle behind wedding registries, of course.

Because presumably their family has thrown a few weddings themselves.

Making cheaper wedding cakes is definitely a good idea. I prefer flavour over kitsch. But I think guests would probably notice if the cake doesn't actually get cut, but a cupcake gets substituted instead.

Instead, I think that only baking a top layer and cutting that would satisfy the photographers. Then wheel the fake cake away to the kitchen, and bring out slices of sheet cake to satisfy everyone's stomachs.

Ours was the opposite: a three-layer cake where the top two layers were fake.

This was because we didn't have enough guests for a three layer cake (according to the bakery), but for a larger wedding, I suppose you could supplement that with sheet cake?

>we didn't have enough guests for a three layer cake (according to the bakery)

Are you implying that you did, or that your guests really like cake?

I read it as "We told the bakery we had 20 guests and wanted a three-tier cake; they told us their three-tier cake feeds 40 people and recommended fewer tiers to save money"

Is there a word for this: when the tradition is maintained in form but not in function?

The word I think of is "skeumorphic", though that's not 100% the same thing here.

I believe this is the word that best fits.

skeuomorphic - Pertaining to skeuomorphs, obsolete design elements which are retained for familiarity or out of tradition, even though they no longer serve any functional purpose.

Ritual.

Is it any more fake than the tradition?

Hah I wonder how much of this we do presently without realizing. Shaking hands maybe

What do you think the original function of shaking hands was as compared to what it is today?

There was this funny study that found that people were more likely to hold their hand next to their nose right after shaking hands. From this they concluded that hand-shaking is a non-intrusive way of smelling a person you just met.

showing that you're not holding a weapon.

...in one hand.

It also shows that you trust the person not to use a weapon. One hand may be clear but you trust that the person doesn't have one in the other.

Symbolic?

Vestigial?

Cargo cult!

We had wedding pie. It was great. Pie > cake

Oh you pie people. You make me laugh. Cake will always be superior to pie. Yes, I'm sorry. For one very simple reason. FROSTING! Ya'll forgot about frosting!

- Paul F Tompkins.

But the icing is always the worst part!

Preach! Icing is marketing, the entire point is to make a shitty cake look less shitty by completely hiding it. Heavy icing is usually deceptive, hiding the emptiness of the actual cake.

Frosting is bad, and you can put ice pies if you like ruining good things.

The advantage of cake over pie is layering. A pie reveals everything upfront, a cake can hide deeper secrets, and provide more contrast in both taste and texture.

So now instead of the expense of one cake, you have the expense of two cakes, and you have a cake-shaped hunk of styrofoam in a one-bedroom apartment in NYC of all places.

Maddeningly absurd.

The price of a fancy wedding cake is the absurd part.

Even better would be ditching this fake cake thing altogether, but if you’re going for the traditional playbook, this is pragmatic.

I thought everyone knew that giant fancy cakes are usually props?

Anyway, I wanted a fancy single-layer cake at my wedding, but my wife nixed it. Our caterer ended up making delicious cupcakes!

Nothing todo with the cake, but i would like to see, that the people who prepare my cake are taking all the right steps, beginning with a hair net when its over 50cms long.

What happens if the bride and groom don't know and try and do that stupid "smooshing the cake in each other's faces" thing and it's not real?

That meant $1,000 to $2,400 worth of cake for a party of 160 or so, even though the menu at the wedding location we had chosen came with dessert.

Well, good for her on saving some dough, but 160 guests makes this sound like not only a First World Problem but a rather upper class first world problem at that.

We had over 100 people at our wedding. Our total budget was $2,000 and we went slightly over that. You can save as much money as you want if you're willing to give up having the flashiest high-status stuff. Several guests told me later it was one of the best weddings they'd been to because it wasn't all high-strung and demanding.

For her second wedding, my sister had a fairly big wedding. She was also part of a two career couple and had lived a long time in the same state. She knew a lot of people.

In contrast, I have moved a lot as an adult and nearly 6 years of homelessness taught me that poverty is very hard on your social life. I would have trouble coming up with, say, six people to invite to a hypothetical second wedding for me. I just do not have a big social network of that sort.

Congrats on getting a wedding for very little money. But I strongly suspect that knowing 200 people well enough to even invite them to your wedding makes you more upper class than you likely realize.

I eloped at age 19. Including rings (bought on sale), dinner and a movie, marriage license, blood testing and cab fair, it was under $300. So you sound like you did amazingly well.

Your testimony doesn't change my opinion that a mock cake for 160 guests is a rather upper class first world problem.

> But I strongly suspect that knowing 200 people well enough to even invite them to your wedding

That just depends on what you define as "well enough". I've been invited to quite a few weddings of people I barely knew.

Oh yeah, gotta adjust for the fact that the article was about NYC/Washington DC and mine was rural New Hampshire.

Edit:

Redacted.

I'm tired and maybe misreading your comment.

I'm outta here folks. Talk at you good people some other time.

A 200 person wedding on a $2000 budget is a remarkable feat.

It depends on who you know and what you can do yourself.

I had a simple courthouse wedding both times. My sister, though, wanted a "fancy" wedding.

She was able to have the ceremony in the church she attended and use their place for the reception, all pretty cheap. All the formal wear was rented save for one bridesmaid that decided to buy hers for herself: She was using the same dress for another formal event. I personally made the cake, though my sister paid for supplies (that was my wedding gift). My mother did most of the simple decorating.

The reception was mid-afternoon, between lunch and dinner. No food beyond cake and non-alcoholic drinks were served.

2 gourmet hotdogs per person

It was a Sam's club hamburger, but hotdogs were also available. No, I'm not kidding. The wedding was in a friend's backyard with folding chairs and tables borrowed from a church. The cake was made by a friend of a friend for about half the going rate, but we also bought a couple dozen gluten-free cupcakes. We tried to pay the cooks but they refused; the musician was family, and the officiant and the sound guy (for the dance music) were personal friends and didn't charge. It was nearly a regular BYOB backyard party but with better decorations.

That's not really $10/head, that's a lot of in-kind wedding gifts. It's just an accounting difference from paying for all that stuff.

Yeah, that's totally fair. And we treated it that way, asking certain guests to bring certain things instead of gifts.

Honestly I'd prefer that over the expensive yet awful food I've had at weddings. They charge expensive restaurant prices but all the food has to be made in bulk to serve at once so you're not getting expensive restaurant quality.

Why is 160 guests a First World Problem? I don't understand.

I live in the Third World (well, we call it "the developing world" nowadays). 160 guests is totally normal. The last wedding I was at had 500 guests.

A mock cake to save big bucks over an actual fancy cake is a first world problem.

The US is not like developing countries. Inviting 160 people to a wedding tends to be an upper class thing here.

It's a different culture.

No, that’s absolutely false. It may be common among the upper class, but it is also common among larger families, strongly religious communities and many immigrant cultures, all of which are definitely not upper class signifiers.

I have vouched for your comment because it's a completely reasonable observation and I have no idea why it was dead.

That said, ...

Edit: I'm tired. I've redacted argument here. Let's just say I did use a qualifier and let's leave it that.

Cakes are made with batter, not dough, so none was saved.

Well, I upvoted it.

Word play!

In Italy 160 guests is just close family.

"The cake is a lie" is a famous line that happened to become an internet meme (935k google hits when used in quotes)

It's also really funny if you happened to play Portal 1 which you should because

- it's really funny (might have said that already),

- educative,

- addictive,

- less than 24hs to play through (more like 6 to 12 IIRC),

- teaches you how to interactively teach concepts without saying a word (there was a great blog post on this topic but I couldn't find it).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com