Bride's Choice & Best of Weddings Awards

A Cake Life, for the second year in a row, is proud to announce that we've been chosen to receive the Wedding Wire Bride’s Choice Awards 2012. This award recognizes the top 5 percent of local wedding professionals from the WeddingWire Network who demonstrate quality and service excellence in the wedding industry.  Read more about last year’s award HERE.

In addition, we are excited to share that A Cake Life has been rated by local brides and voted The Knot Best of Weddings 2012.

The Knot Wedding Network captures detailed feedback from more than 1.8 million brides with reviews in 29 different categories of wedding businesses.  Approximately 6,800 local vendors receive this prestigious award, representing the top 4 percent of local vendors on The Knot Wedding Network.

We are truly honored to receive these awards and would like to thank Wedding Wire, The Knot, and our fans and past clients for all their wonderful reviews and testimonials!

To read our Wedding Wire Reviews, go HERE and for our Knot Reviews, go HERE.

Featured Wedding: Amelia & Tony’s Architectural Arrangement

Photos courtesy of Aaron Yoshino of HonoZooLoo Media

We’d been working with Amelia for several months leading up to her August wedding to fiancée Tony.  When Amelia first contacted us she explained that she's a local girl living on the mainland while finishing her Masters degree in Architecture, in addition to planning her Hawaii wedding, so there were many phone calls and e-mails back and forth to coordinate everything.

 Amelia emphasized she wanted to create something "visually interesting", with a country and carefree style for their relaxed wedding set in the beautiful Waimea Valley State Park.  She put together an inspiration board which helped us get an overall feel for her wedding.

After discussing a few design options, Amelia loved the idea of creating a satellite cake display!  A satellite cake system is made up of multiple individual cakes of different sizes, decorated to be a cohesive, eye-catching presentation.  Amelia finally decided on 7 individual cakes to serve their 150 guests.  While many of the guests were local, Tony's family is from Greece and would be traveling very far to attend their wedding so they chose our Coconut Cake with Lilikoi Cream filling for a very tropical dessert.

Photos courtesy of Kristin Kato

Each cake was decorated with a different textured buttercream iced pattern, in different colors, on varying height cake stands and plates, several including fresh flowers for variety.  The cake table was finished with a beautiful burlap table linen, candles, flowers and seashells.  Amelia, being the architect she is, created this amazing computerized 3-D rendering of her cake display!  How awesome is this?

Photos courtesy of Aaron Yoshino of HonoZooLoo Media

Amelia and Tony's cakes were set perfectly for their reception and they were thrilled with the end product.  Congratulations Amelia and Tony!

Vendors of Amelia and Tony's Wedding:

Cake: A Cake Life

Venue: Waimea Valley State Park

Catering: Off Menu Catering

Photography:  Aaron Yoshino of HonoZooLoo Media

2011: End of Year Review

It’s that time of year where we often reflect on the year gone by, and look forward to new events and opportunities the coming year holds. 

For A Cake Life, we are extremely thankful and grateful for your support.  This past year was a busy one for us – we tripled our business, creating 200 WEDDING CAKES for couples getting married, in addition baking cakes for birthdays, anniversaries and other special celebrations.

Here's a few highlights from 2011!

A few of our couples cutting into their wedding cakes!
I LOVE cake cutting shots! =)

Photo by Fisheye Studio

Photo by Renai Photo

Photo by Frank Amodo Photography

Photo by Kai Photo

We had an article in the MidWeek that you can check out HERE

Me with our cake and cupcakes for Eden In Love's 1st Anniversary Party

 We were among the team of amazing vendors who gave 3 lucky military couples the wedding of their dreams in the Royal Aloha Wedding by Kathy Ireland featured on ENTERTAINMENT TONIGHT!  You can check out a clip HERE

Me with Kathy Ireland at the Royal Aloha Wedding!  She's so TALL!

Royal Aloha Wedding- Grand prize winners April & James!

A Cake Life was featured in the First Edition Crave Hawaii Book
showcasing Hawaii Women Entrepreneurs!  Check it out HERE 

Giving back to the community is also important to us and we were able to provide donations to the following charitable events:

• Easter Seals – Christmas Gingerbread House Decorating Event
• American Cancer Society Relay for Life Event and Rock Around the Clock Fundraiser
• Tobacco Free Hawaii – Pretty in Pink Fundraiser
• American Red Cross for Japan Relief
• Shriners Children’s Hospital – (Our FAV event of the year) Cupcake Decorating Day

At our most recent event, we provided cupcakes, icing, and lots of sprinkles for children in the Recreational Therapy program at Shriners Children’s Hospital.  We did a demonstration of 3 different design - a green Christmas tree, a red poinsettia flower and a simple cupcake swirl design.  While many children had handicaps that limited their functionality, they were all excited and eager to jump right into decorating (and eating) their cupcakes.  Even their parents and hospital volunteers had a great time learning to pipe different designs.   It was a very rewarding experience for us and I'm so glad we had the opportunity to do something fun like this for the children.

These are some of the cupcakes a little girl made!

Some of the icings & sprinkles ready for the children!

 The Christmas Tree at Shriners Children's Hospital

Looking into 2012 have a lot more that we want to do.  We hope that business will continue to grow, that we will continue to be challenged with cake designs and techniques, and be given opportunities to share our blessings with others.  Last but not least, we have a special expansion project in the works…keep checking back with us to learn more!

As we step into 2012, we wish you all the
blessings and best wishes in the New Year!

With Warmest Aloha,

Kristin

Customized Cupcakes Boxes and Sleeves by Emi Ink

At The Wedding Café’s Cake, Cocktails & Catering Workshop we debuted some amazing cupcake sleeves and boxes, courtesy of Stacey from Emi Ink – perfect accents for our cupcakes.

Mini Cupcake Boxes – prices start at $1.75 each.  

Boxes come fully assembled with a plastic see-through window on the front and an interior base that holds the cupcake in place. Many different colors available in matte, metallic or patterned stock.

Cupcakes Sleeves (for standard-sized cupcakes) - prices start at $0.40 each for a solid color (no printing) OR $0.60 for customized printed text.  A custom design can also be added to the sleeves (graphic design fee may be incurred, price will vary depending on the complexity of the design).

For 2012, they will be coming out with a color palette specifically for the cupcake sleeves, and a special limited collection of seasonal colors will be released throughout the year. If a customer requires a specific color not found in their swatch book, they can do special orders.

They currently have a minimum order requirement of 50 for both the boxes and the sleeves. Turnaround time is 4-6 weeks.

More details and designs can be found on her site, Emi Ink.  

Check them out, and tell them A Cake Life sent you!