Dear Etiquetteer:
Many thanks for your wonderful column. I enjoy it so much. Perhaps someday you can write a column about the tradition of saving a slice of wedding cake. My mother’s corner cupboard has a sweet smell that I attribute to the slice of cake that lay entombed in a covered milk glass in the far recesses of the cabinet until she passed. My parents enjoyed over 50 years of marriage and the cake stayed with them the entire time.
Dear Caked:
Etiquetteer’s Dear Mother would have said “There’s no time like the present!” So let’s explore some of those things today.
But first, a confession: wedding cake is one of Etiquetteer’s favorite foods since childhood — at least until the discovery of groom’s cake at a 1971 wedding, which has the distinct advantage of being chocolate. They aren’t always chocolate — who can forget the red velvet armadillo groom’s cake in Steel Magnolias? — but then, there’s no accounting for taste. There’s nothing more wonderful than wedding cake.
Etiquetteer hasn’t heard about a tradition of saving a piece of wedding cake in perpetuity. The longest it might last is the first anniversary. Indeed, the tradition Etiquetteer first heard about was the Happy Couple saving the top tier in the freezer to eat on their first anniversary. Some have suggested that it might keep until the birth of their first child, but Etiquetteer thinks all babies deserve their own christening cakes, not hand-me-downs. Was the slice your mother saved from her wedding, or someone else’s? Regardless, Etiquetteer thinks its preservation all those many years Completely Charming, but not perhaps universal.
Emily Post Herself put forward the Perfectly Proper Procedure for 20th century weddings in her first edition of Etiquette (1922): “In addition to the big cake on the bride’s table, there are at all weddings, near the front door so that the guests may each take one as they go home, little individual boxes of wedding cake, ‘black’ fruit cake. Each box is made of white moiré or gros-grain paper, embossed in silver with the last initial of the groom intertwined with that of the bride and tied with white satin ribbon.” While this might be a fruitcake, the frosting would traditionally be wedding white. This is a lovely gesture of hospitality, and also should satisfy the momentary* enthusiasm for a souvenir of the occasion.
The tradition that goes along with this, which reinforces the Traditional Maidenly Aspiration to Marriage**, is for a young woman to sleep with a piece of wedding cake under her pillow in order to dream of her future husband. The Knot declares that this tradition dates from the 17th century. Upstairs Downstairs fans will remember Ruby shoveling an enormous slice of Georgina’s wedding cake into her purse “t’put under me pillow, Mrs. Bridges!” Etiquetteer considers this a rather messy tradition, but really, your private life is your affair, and this is between you and your laundress.
Emily Post Herself concludes: “At a sit-down breakfast the wedding cake boxes are sometimes put, one at each place, on the tables so that each guest may be sure of receiving one, and other ‘thoughtless’ ones prevented from carrying more than their share away.” Let’s remember, folks, that Greed is one of the Seven Deadly Sins, and taking more than one slice home is Not Perfectly Proper.
Etiquetteer wishes you Tasty Joy in every bite of wedding cake that comes your way, no matter how long you wait to enjoy it.
*Etiquetteer once saved a tulle bag of three Jordan almonds from a friend’s wedding for five years before disposing of it to make room for other sentimental detritus.
**Maidens are allowed to wish for all sorts of worldly aspirations and achievements now, thank goodness; they are not confined to marriage.