Photo credit Blush Wedding Photography
Unless I'm the bride, my favorite part of any wedding is usually the cake. So I thought it was only fair that I worked to get the best cake I could for my guests. But what fun is it for me to pay an arm and a leg for a cake? I swear half the fun of this wedding planning is all the money I'm working to save. Here is the story of how I got my baker to get me a deal... Let me set the scene with the major players: in corner A we have an Italian Bakery we'll call IB and in corner B, we have a German Bakery we'll call GB. I think it's important to note that these two places were selected because I've had both their cakes and I found them to both be delicious.
I book an appointment with IB who tells me that they are having a wedding show, and if I give a deposit that very same day, I get 10% off the total price of my cake. I said sure no problem. Sounds like a plan. But I think I'm smarter than the average bear and would never commit to the first cake company I talk to. So I immediately call the other location, aka GB, in an attempt at making an appointment with them prior to meeting with IB. However, as luck would have it, there were no appointment times available until the week after the IB meeting. I book it anyway and call IB back. "No, I'm very sorry," they inform me. "You can only get the discount if you make a deposit the same day. If you leave without committing, you pay full price." I keep the appointment anyway, not yet knowing how I am going to swing it.
The fiance and I go in, we see some display cakes, we taste a few flavors and we look at an album. After discussing the flavors between the 2 of us, the cake designer joins us and we start talking style. I dusted off my pintrest app to give her an idea of my vision, the groom gives his very creative ideas as usual, and she starts throwing a couple of diagrams together for us. After some back and forth, we settle on a design--a pretty awesome one if I do say so myself--and she goes to her boss to quote me a price. We reconvene and I drop the bomb; we're not ready to commit to IB. She goes back to the boss and returns with good news: IB will honor the 10% discount if I come back to the shop with my deposit within the week after visiting their chief competitor GB.
I'll let you on to a little secret: I've had GB's cakes and they are delicious. I also know that compared to IB's offer, there will be a 25-30% mark up on the GB price before they even offer me the discount. Fi and I already discussed that we are likely going to go with IB, but we can't sign the paperwork without knowing we did our due diligence. We need to be confident with our decision by going to our GB meeting as scheduled, tasting the cake, and being outraged by the exorbitant amount we know they're going to ask for.
I already said I liked the taste of each place and I am relatively familiar with their designs. They don't only do wedding cakes, so I am familiar with their quality and reputation of these two bakeries. The variance in quality does not justify the difference in cost. So the premium I am paying for with GB is the brand and name recognition they have in my area. But what is the value of brand and name recognition of a wedding cake? Are people actually going to ask me where I got my cake? If they do, it's probably because they like it anyway. I can't imagine they'd be too interested in knowing where I got the cake if it didn't taste or look good. So who cares if it's not from the bakery that the south shore people consider to be high end?
I look forward to completing this post with my assessment of GB's designing prowess, their customer service and their price.
To be continued...
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