Wedding Planning Chapter 20 – Our Wedding Cakes (for GDL)



According to tradition, the groom-to-be is supposed to present wedding cakes to the bride-to-be’s family for them to give out the cakes together with the wedding invite. I was looking for the traditional 8/9/10 slices of cakes in a box and I wanted something tasty yet not too expensive. The following are some of the choices I considered:

Gin Thye

Gin Thye

Minimum order quantity and lead time: Not stated on their website. However, there was some sharing that the minimum lead time is one week.
Presentation: I was attracted to its 9 piece cakes as there is a printed 喜 word on the centre piece of its cakes. There were other printed pictures, including that of a cute couple, 喜 with mandarin ducks and 喜 with a heart shaped border when I first researched about it but it is no longer on its website now. I thought this was quite cute and clearly tells the recipient that there is a joyous occasion coming up!
Price: Reasonable at $11.80 $12.80 per box. No discount even if you buy more (A reviewer shared that she bought 54 boxes but there was still no discount and they only had free delivery).
Taste: Being a bakery established since 1964, I have no doubts about its taste. I have also read several reviews about the soft and tasty cakes they bake. However, I have also read one or two reviews where the cakes were hard and dry or turned stale quickly.
Delivery: As of last year when I checked, there will be free delivery of the cakes to one location if you spend above $200. However, the reviews of their delivery eventually pushed me away from them. This was because I had read quite a few reviews where they were late for their delivery and some couples had to miss the “auspicious time” for their Guo Da Li (GDL) as they cakes had not been delivered to their place on time. As Sunshine does not have a car and that their branches are not near where he stayed then, we did not want to risk delaying our GDL due to their delayed delivery.

Had there was an assurance that there would be no issues with delivery, we might have gone for our wedding cakes here.

Pine Garden

The Pine Garden

Minimum order quantity and lead time: 10 boxes; not stated on their website.
Presentation: standard 10 pieces arrangement. They changed their packaging last year from a maroon coloured box to a bright red box with 喜 word on it. My cousin who received his cakes mid last year happened to be one of their first customers who had the newer packaging. They were quite unhappy about it because they preferred the old packaging and was told that that would be the box they would receive when they placed their orders. Alas, they received a different packaging when they collected their cakes. They were also not ready when my cousin went to pick up his cakes and in the end, my cousin had to wait about 20 minutes before he could get his cakes. The worse thing was, they gave him one box lesser than what he had ordered and none of my cousin nor his friends who were there with him (why would your friends know how many boxes of cakes you ordered, right?) realised it until they sent the cakes to the bride’s house. The sharp bride was the one who realised this and they had to go back to the shop to collect it. Omg.
Price: Slightly pricier at $12.80 $13.80 per box for their traditional cakes. Their signature collection (the one with their famous lychee martini) which used to cost $13.80 last year when I was researching, now costs $15.20! Wow.

Chapter 20 The Pine Garden

Taste: My cousin had the traditional ones and my mum loved it! She had one when she helped out at my cousin’s GDL and she commented that it was soft and yummy! It was so good that she was still commenting on the cakes days after we finished them. I had the ones straight from the fridge and hence, I did not find that it was that fantastic. She agreed that the ones kept in the fridge were not as great too and that she preferred the fresh ones.

In addition to their traditional cake set, I recently had the chance to taste their fruit tarts and swiss rolls set. I loved fruit tarts and was happy when I saw them. However, I feel that their fruit tarts did not impress me as there was too much cream! In addition, I prefer a slightly saltier tart but the blueberry jam made them sweet (and perhaps also made the tarts more moist than it should have been). Sunshine like the swiss rolls though. However, with the generous amount of fresh cream on top of it, I thought they were brownies initially until he told me otherwise. All in all, if I were to choose this now, I would choose the signature series if I were to order from them as 1) it is their signature; 2) I felt that there was no point for me to pay so much for a box of traditional wedding cakes when I could have gotten cheaper and as tasty cakes as theirs at one of the more traditional bakeries and 3) I do not like their fruit tarts. Lol.

Chapter 20 Fruit tart box


Delivery: If I remember correctly, there would be free delivery to one location if one orders more than $200. So far, I do not have any experience nor read any reviews about their delivery (which I think should mean good news as people would definitely comment/complain about the delivery if there were issues).

Swee Heng

Swee Heng

Minimum order quantity and lead time: 5 boxes!!! (This is the smallest minimum number of boxes I ever come across for wedding cakes!); Their saleslady told me four days in advance.
Presentation: I like their box! As my tea set and bowl set were of this same couple design already, I was already biased towards Swee Heng when I saw their boxes! Haha. Otherwise, it was a standard 10 pieces arrangement, similar to any other cake shops. However, I thought that their pink cakes were too pink! It seems to me that a lot of colouring was added when they made their pink cakes and this was consistent among the numerous Swee Heng wedding cakes I have seen online.
Price: $7.80 per box!!! (This is still the cheapest wedding cake I have ever seen and is still a very attractive price to me!)
Taste: I read multiple reviews of how soft and delicious their cakes were and I was not worried about this as I had some of their other cakes before.
Delivery: Free delivery for orders above $150, with delivery schedule of 6am – 8am or 9am – 12pm.

Review:

Sunshine and I ordered from Swee Heng eventually due to the following reasons:

  • Price: At $7.80 per box, it was the cheapest price we saw for wedding cakes. We also had a discount of 5% for orders above…. $x amount (I cannot remember the amount).
  • Taste: All the reviews I read were complementing the taste of their cakes.
  • Packaging: Cute couple which is the same couple as that on my tea set and bowl set.
  • Delivery/Self-collection: Though we had free delivery to my home, we split the orders and arranged for another day to self-collect the remaining cakes. This was because my GDL happened on a weekday morning and though my parents took leave for my GDL, most of our relatives were not at home to receive our wedding invites and the wedding cakes. As I had 36 boxes of cakes, there was insufficient space in the fridge to keep all the cakes till night when my parents could give out the cakes. There was also no way for us to finish distributing all the cakes in a night. Hence, we had to split the orders into two: a morning delivery and a night collection on separate days. As they had a lot of outlets, we were able to choose to collect our cakes at one of their branches in Ubi. This saved us some time and effort as compared to having to drive all the way to another part of Singapore to collect our cakes.
Chapter 20 Boxes of cakes
My 过大礼 cakes

Thumbs up: We were afraid that delivery might be late but the cakes were promptly delivered at 6+am in the morning (I would have preferred that they come at 8am but oh well, better early than late!). As there was insufficient space in the fridge (still!) for all our cakes, I alternate putting them in the fridge. Lol. We also placed them in cooler bags when we went to deliver the cakes. Thankfully, all the cakes were not melted, despite not being in the fridge for long since 6+am in the morning, when they were given to our relatives! *beam!* I had a very pleasant surprise when I opened one of the boxes to take pictures of the cakes: the smell of cakes was heavenly when I lifted the lid of the box! Ahhh~ very fragrant! In addition, I noted that the company had taken into account my request for the pink colouring to be lesser than their usual amount and I was very pleased with it. The cakes were still quite pink, but it was definitely not as strong as those I saw online. After seeing and smelling my cakes, my next step was… to eat it! Hehe. While some couples believe that they could not have their own wedding cakes and eat it, my mum said she had never heard of this before and hence, I ate my own wedding cakes. The cakes were very soft and delicious, even when I ate them immediately after removing them from the fridge and even after a few days later! My father who opened the box on another separate occasion agreed that the cakes smelt heavenly and had all praises for the cakes when he ate them. He repeatedly remarked that we made the right choice choosing Swee Heng for our wedding cakes.

Chapter 20 Swee Heng cakes
:D!

Areas for improvement: Swee Heng’s website for their wedding cakes was the worst among those I researched. There was totally no mention about them selling wedding cakes for GDL on their website and I had to google image “Swee Heng wedding cakes”, refer to their contacts on their wedding cake brochure before I could call/email someone to inquire about their cakes. I believe it would definitely help their sales if they have a good website with all the information one may need for wedding cakes: minimum quantity, lead time needed, delivery information etc. Their system/staff was also very inflexible. They insisted that they must split their invoices into two because I would be getting my cakes on two separate occasions. While I was ok with that, they informed me that only one of my bills would be entitled to a 5% discount as the other did not meet their minimum amount spent. Oh well. I understand that the discount may be hard-coded into their system and hence, there was nothing I could do about it though I wished they could have been more flexible about it since I was indeed spending that amount. Some of their boxes were also slightly dented when they were delivered to my place due to the stacking of the cakes. Maybe they could stack less boxes on top of each other for their future orders.

Read Wedding Planning Chapter 19 – 四点金 here.
Read Wedding Planning Chapter 21 – Trip to the Bridal Shop here.


Spread the word:
Rainbow

A novice baker =)

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