Under the Sea 20th Anniversary Cake

This past July (really delayed post, I know) was my parents' 20th wedding anniversary. My mom had wanted to plan this nice vow renewal ceremony on the beach and invite friends and family...but with my dad having been out of a job it was out of the question. I felt really bad, this was something she's been wanting to plan for years. So I had an idea one day. What if we (my sister and I) made them a cake similar to what she had talked about me making them for their ceremony? So we planned it out...the hard part was decorating it on the sly.

We baked a double layer marble hexagon cake at home (about time I got some use out of those hexagon baking pans I got FOREVER ago), bought a bucket of light blue buttercream from Sam's, bought some graham cracker crumbs and several other decorating components, and we did this ALL ON THE SLY. This cake HAD to be a surprise. Luckily, my aunt was willing to assist us in our mission, and let us use her kitchen to decorate our cake. =) My 6-year-old cousin Alyssa liked helping us put the pearl dust on our white chocolate shells, and watched us the whole time as we decorated.

The decorations were pretty easy. We pressed some graham cracker crumbs onto the sides and top of the cake, and piped the seaweed with green Wilton icing and the bubbles with white, adhered the shells with icing, and added little pearl sprinkles (I thought they were so cute!). It turned out great, and we had a lot of fun making it. And we did get the surprise factor we were looking for-we even got tears! What a great way to celebrate 20 years- and here's to many more!