Hamming it up

The Pigs Took the Cake!

My wedding date coincided with my best friend’s twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. We decided to repeat our vows together; she and her husband would renew their vows at my small, second wedding.

Brides go to great lengths to select the perfect wedding cake and topper. I am not a professional cake decorator, but every birthday cake I’d ever baked for my grandchildren had received rave reviews. How difficult could it be, I reasoned, to make my own small, three-tiered wedding cake? It actually turned out quite beautifully. I chose a unique and most appropriate ceramic figurine topper: bride and groom porkers smooching. Yes, pigs!

The reason for my selection began five years before when my best friend, who had been my former next door neighbor in Alaska, came for a visit. We had so much catching up to do. I couldn’t wait to introduce my fiancée and my best friend to one another. Even though twenty years had passed, it was as though we’d never been apart.

We visited tourist attractions. At one of our town’s animal sanctuaries, she saw her first pot-bellied pig and fell in love with it. Her obsession with that paunchy sow became the topic of every letter and phone call when she returned home.

“How’s my pig? When are you going to send me one?” We sent her pig photos, but in each letter she jokingly begged for the real thing.

My fiancée, with his warped sense of humor, decided to grant her wish. He called to tell her that her pig was on the way. He went to the pet store and purchased rawhide pig ears for her dog to chew, pickled pig’s feet in a jar and pork rinds in a bag. This went on and on until the two of them were swapping ceramic pig figurines for every occasion and no reason at all. His office study soon looked like hog heaven with decorative wooden shelves on each wall lined with miniature swine of every kind. One pig sat in a rocker reading the New York Times; another stood on a scale with an ice cream cone in hand, a reminder that our favorite vice is ice cream. Then a bikini clad pig with sunburned buns arrived after our beach vacation. She sent the pig in the hammock when we returned from Cancun where we’d taken daily siestas in hammocks. Each pig she sent had particular significance.

On the day of our mutual weddings, my friend admired the three individual cake layers on my kitchen table. She laughed aloud at my choice of cake topper, in honor of her “pig.” We drove the cakes to the reception hall. I stacked the three layers which were positioned on thin wooden dowels. As the wedding music began, she and her husband, and my fiancée and I walked down the white silken carpet runner and took our places in front of the pastor.

Standing with my husband on one side and my best friend on the other, we sealed our friendship with hilarity that April afternoon. The four of us had no sooner said, “I do”; “I do”; “I do”; “I do,” when I glanced over at the cake. Horrified, I whispered in my friend’s ear, “I do not believe it!” The minister solemnly continued to speak. We had to stifle our giggles when the middle cake tier collapsed. The pigs on the top layer tumbled … icing on the cake of our life-long friendship. Usually it’s the bride that steals the show, but at our wedding, even though there were two brides, it was the pigs that took the cake!

Published in Patchwork Path, Wedding Bouquet