Here is quite a tale of magical coincidences. Or, one could say, of absolute perfect timing. In my experience, there is no such thing as luck, just conscious orchestration from higher realms of reality that is miraculously planned to occur.
One of my favorite quotes is, “There seems no plan, because it is all plan.” – C.S. Lewis.
The photo above is from a cake that fits that esoteric quote to a tee. July of 1996, I got a commission to do a fall wedding cake design. From start to finish, the process included a series of events that were astoundingly coincidental. Everything just fell into place.
The precise appointment of the consultation with the bride, ending with a contract being signed, was at the exact timing of a very special, celestial event called, “a wedding ring, solar eclipse.” A wedding ring, solar eclipse is of a type that, at its culmination, the halo of light appears to be a bright ring around the shadow of the moon, with one point, on one side, intensely brighter, looking like a shiny diamond.
I was aware of the eclipse occurring at the exact moment the contract was signed, and that it was a coincidence that i too received the highest fee ever in my career to create a wedding cake, $3200 for only a three-tiered cake for 200 people at precisely that moment, and that price was during the mid-nineties!
The bride-to-be was clearly open to spending the money, sporting too a very grand engagement ring. I could tell she understood and appreciated an artist’s effort. But I do remember, as she signed the contract, she jokingly said, “I could buy a VW car for this price!”
Her only specifications for the cake design were Fall decorations with wheat as the central theme. I told her tat I would be creating her wheat kernel by kernel, and that her cake would take me weeks of work to accomplish, which it did.
The flash forward to a few days before the wedding! Steve Hartman of “ABC Eyewitness new” contacted me. He wanted to sdo a story on my sugar and cake art. I told him that I was creating a wedding cake, the most expensive one yet at that very moment. And he said, “Great! I would like to film it once it is done.”
So a day before delivering the cake to a manse in Upper State New York, in order to photograph it, I set the cake in front of a back drop with a Full Moon. I had painted it several months before, not knowing that it would work great with this Fall theme wedding cake. Mr. Hartman, who was the most pleasant person ever, entered my New York City studio to video the segment. You can view the actual ABC News publicity segment here.
With that accomplished, the cake was carefully delivered the next day to the wedding site. Upon dropping it off, I noticed that on each and every table was a brass sculpture of the Sun and Moon together, I assume it was to symbolize the bride and groom coming together, It seemed a funny coincidence since the sun and moon in alignment is an eclipse event, and that I had included the moon in the ultimate photo that would be a part of the 136 objects that would make it into my book, “Cakes By Design”. The Bride and I never discussed this moon theme at all.
Now to show you how everything came together in a most miraculous way, that neither the bride nor I could have imagined. the ABC story happened to be aired the night of the Harvest Full Moon a few days later! Literally the weatherman, Sam Champion, witnessing the story about my “Harvest Moon” cake, went right into discussing the actual harvest moon that was occcurring that night!
The fact that all these symbolic elements, ultimately coming together on the Harvest Full Moon night of that year, became for me, one of those times in life that confirmed that we are not the ones in charge, Others unseen, orchestrate events in our lives that can at times appear to be beyond coincidental. I end this magical tale with a close up of a Pasha butterfly in sugar.
To see the entire cake, go here to page 4 of my Cake Art gallery.
Go here for other “Cake Decorating Lessons”.