At Sarah Haywood Wedding Design, we make it a rule never to blog, tweet or otherwise discuss our clients or their weddings. But this is the story of a cake: a six foot, ten tier creation complete with delicate and carefully crafted sugar-flower decoration that we needed to transport (together with 350 fragile ‘bride and groom’ cookies) aboard a private jet from London to Italy. No problem, right?

We’re talking about it now as since the bride and groom asked us to submit their wedding to UK Conde Nast Brides Magazine and it has just hit newsstands here in the UK, disclosure is not an issue!

The wedding was at a winery owned by our clients in the beautiful unspoiled area of Le Marche on the Adriatic Coast. They were living in London and fell in love with the work of our famous ‘Queen of Cakes’ Peggy Porschen. Whilst at Peggy’s Cake Parlour for the tasting they also fell in love with Peggy’s scrumptious cookies. So she designed for us individual bride and groom cookies with details of the bride’s gown reflected in the frosting, and the groom dressed in a tux as he would be for the evening wedding.

The cookies were to serve as place cards at each guest’s place setting at the tables (84 people to a table!). We boxed the cookies, added a hand calligraphed card and tied each with a bow (you have no idea how long this took!).

Now all we had to do now was transport these lovely items to Italy! Only a small plane would do. Smaller private aircraft do not have a hold so luggage is stored in the cabin together with the passengers. We carefully ascertained exact measurements for the doorway and aisle, and the ever-meticulous Peggy Porschen and her husband Bryn delivered the carefully packed cookies and cake directly to the tarmac one sunny June morning.  In went the bridal party and then we packed the cake boxes carefully around them, together with the bride’s gown, six bridesmaids dresses and a dozen or more boxes packed with wedding paraphernalia together with a sword (to be explained shortly).

But the bottom two tiers of the cake were just too big to sit anywhere other than the doorway. Just before closing the plane door in went the biggest tiers! The pilot then went through the obligatory safety procedure: “Ladies and Gentlemen: in the event of an emergency please eat your way out!”

Sarah Haywood Wedding Design

Luckily, the cake arrived in pristine condition. The week before Peggy taught me how to repair any small damage to the sugar flowers just in case something went awry in the transport. She had also promised to jump on a flight in the event of an full-scale cake emergency that was beyond my skills.

Thankfully it went off without a hitch. The bride was of Middle Eastern origins and the cake was cut with a family sword brought in from Syria for the specific purpose (the story of that at customs was a whole other tale best told over a glass of wine….)!

Sarah x