Beautiful Wedding Cake Mystery Solved: 63 Years Later Couple Reveals What’s Inside
Wedding cake mystery
It was a mystery more than 60 years in the making.
More than 60 years since LaMar and Julia married.
More than 60 years since they saved the top tier of their wedding cake.
Instead of eating it on their first anniversary, they kept it.
Pretty much forever.
For their forever.
Four grown kids.
Five grands.
One great grand.
Seven moves.
Two countries.
Each of those moves the cake tier has come with them, wrapped in several layers of plastic and sealed inside a metal tin.
It has lived in the back of every freezer of every house they’ve ever lived in.
“It’s just something that was there,” one of their sons told me this week. “Friends would say, ‘That’s weird.’ But to us it was just the old cake tin in the back of the freezer.”
Decades long discussion
They’d talk about it each anniversary.
Eat it?
Never.
Sure, it inspired questions over the years like, “What was the flavor inside?”
“Fruitcake,” Julia always insisted.
Fruitcake?
Mom couldn’t be right.
The fruitcake theory
Who has fruitcake inside their wedding cake?
“Fruitcake,” Mom kept insisting.
For decades it was easy to slough off her guess to just being wrong.
In recent years, there’s more to raise eyebrows.
Now, there was the issue of Mom’s memory.
It had been slipping.
The dementia diagnosis a couple years ago informed the family this was something bigger than just forgetfulness.
It has only brought this couple closer.
True devotion
“They are absolutely devoted to each other,” their son shared. “She was by his side for his entire career as a prominent surgeon. Now, he’s by her side, not letting anyone else take care of her.”
So, there they sat this week on the occasion of LaMar’s 90th birthday.
Sitting around a table at their daughter’s house.
All four children gathered round.
All of the them, staring at the cake.
Still in the tin, of course.
Do you dare?
The question raised a notch.
“Do we dare cut into it?”
The mystery of the cake seemed like the lucky charm that has blessed this marriage.
Look what’s inside?
If not now, then when?
And so, they went for it.
In one respect it wasn’t so easy.
The cake had petrified.
“My dad and I had to hack at it with a screwdriver and a hammer,” Son laughed.
Yet, there it was inside: fruitcake.
Mom is always right
Mom had been right all along.
The sight took her right back to a place she’s not able to go to much these days.
Her memory.
She shared so many details as their wedding day came into full focus.
How it had rained.
How beautiful her dress was.
How she married the love of her life.
There they sat side by side letting the memories wash over them.
Hands clasped.
Which, of course, is the real answer.
What’s inside?
What’s really inside?
That’s long been plain to see.
A great, devoted love.
Her by his side. His by hers.
It’s traveled with them all these decades.
A cake story,
Life,
I’m convinced it doesn’t get any sweeter than that.
While you’re here…
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