Olivia Culpo reveals her must-have wellness essentials
Olivia Culpo loves to pamper herself. Here are the model’s most important wellness essentials.
In the town of Rehoboth, chef Mark Soliday of Confectionery Designs bakes wedding cakes that grace the pages of national magazines.
When Mariah Kennedy-Cuomo married Tellef Lundevall on July 20 in Hyannisport, her spectacular eight-tier wedding cake was inspired by a cake served at Eunice Kennedy’s wedding to Sargent Shriver in 1953. Mariah’s cake was made by Confectionery Designs, the People article said.
Olivia Culpo married Christian McCaffrey in Watch Hill in June, and Vogue featured a photo of their six-tiered wedding cake with alternating layers of vanilla sponge and red velvet cake by Confectionery Designs.
Due to non-disclosure agreements with both couples, Soliday and his wife and business partner Marie Soliday are not allowed to release photos or say much about them. However, the Kennedy-Cuomo PR team released details of the epic cake and a photo. Culpo’s wedding planner could not.
But Mark Soliday can talk about wedding cakes all day long in a highly entertaining way. He’s no newcomer to the industry. In fact, he boasts 38 years of experience. But this year was different.
“We are just entering the world of celebrity,” he said.
Browse Mariah Kennedy-Cuomo’s wedding cake
Before he talks about the design, production and assembly of the cake, here are a few interesting facts about Mariah Kennedy-Cuomo and her wedding cake. She is the daughter of Kerry Kennedy and former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. Her maternal grandfather was the late Robert F. Kennedy. The bride and groom both graduated from Brown University.
Her eight-tier cake consisted of a lemon cake with raspberry cream filling and a chocolate cake with vanilla bean filling and strawberries. There was a thin layer of lemon cream sandwiched between the two flavors.
Due to the height and weight of the cake, a custom-made support system was required. The cake took 60 to 75 hours to complete, which involved building a support system, baking it, applying frosting, attaching piping bags to it, and making sugar flowers.
Mariah’s cake was adorned with a sterling silver bell, just like Eunice Shriver’s in 1953. Mariah’s cake had a red bow engraved with the couple’s engagement date. It was a gift from Melissa DeRosa, a close family friend.
Mariah had to use a ladder to climb up and cut the cake. The entire cake was eaten on the night of the wedding.
What led to celebrity wedding cakes
Having worked in five-star hotels, the Solidays were well prepared for the challenges of baking wedding cakes for many brides in Newport, which Mark called a “wedding mecca.” Many from other states, particularly New York City, find that the cost is a third of what it would be in Manhattan. Business is booming in Rhode Island.
On average, their cakes cost between $2,000 and $6,000. In New York, wedding cake costs start at $16,000 and top out at $30,000.
Mark Soliday grew up in Pennsylvania. Marie is from Ireland. They both worked in resort hotels, he after graduating from the Culinary Institute of America. They met at the Ritz-Carlton in Tysons Corner, Virginia, where he learned from a French pastry chef and she honed her service skills.
They traveled and worked in Dublin, where they were part of the opening team of Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts. When they had the first of their three children, Aidan, they returned to Pennsylvania and ran restaurants and banquet venues. Children Una and Fiona followed.
The Solidays moved to New England 22 years ago to expand their wedding cake business. Mark teaches pastry arts at JWU.
The biggest challenge with wedding cakes is their delivery. The Solidays have two refrigerated trucks that allow them to deliver the cakes in a controlled environment.
Then the fun begins.
Humidity is the enemy of sugar flowers. But high temperatures can destroy a cake if it’s baked in a ballroom or stored under a tent. Buttercream and heat don’t mix. Soliday has even learned to raise the temperature in the refrigerated truck as they approach their destination. They have to be careful that the cake doesn’t go into shock when it goes from a cool environment to a hot one. Global warming is no friend of wedding cakes.
“Having a molten cake is not on anyone’s wish list,” he said. They stress to the couple that they always have to do the right thing for the cake. That might mean not bringing it to the wedding until the reception.
The amount of work involved in making a wedding cake should not be underestimated. Illanna Shawver, Joshua Adams, Auroa Lomas and Daylan Torres are part of the Soliday team that makes, decorates and delivers the cakes. The Solidays’ daughters, Fiona and Una, are also involved.
All staff are cross-trained, including making the signature sugar flowers, so they can jump in at a moment’s notice. They also have to split up to win. On the day of the Kennedy-Cuomo wedding on Cape Cod, Mark was busy with eight layers of cake while Marie was at a second wedding in Newport.
This year they will be doing 70 weddings, compared to the average of 80 to 100. That’s fine with him, Mark said. The year after the COVID pandemic, there were 150 and that was too many to meet all the demands.
How the wedding cake process works
The wedding cake process begins when Marie Soliday meets the couple, the bride or the mother. They work on concepts and share their wishes for the cake. Some are realistic, others are not. Many today want the cake to reflect the wedding dress. Others want a color combination with flowers that the florist only chooses the week of the wedding.
Couples have high expectations of their cakes and the reason for this is social media. Your wedding photos are sent around the world the day after the wedding, not months later.
Couples are “raising the bar for what they want,” he said.
The white wedding cake is still the most popular, but the cake inside doesn’t have to be white. The surprise of cutting into a red velvet, lemon or chocolate cake is part of the fun, Soliday said.
Soliday said his most expensive cake to date cost $9,000 and was made years ago. It was 8 feet tall, with each layer separated by sugar flowers. He lost $100 because he miscalculated the amount of labor needed for all the detail work.
Making elaborate wedding cakes requires not only baking, but also chemistry, science and engineering.
For a tall or elaborate cake, Soliday needs to create an internal structure to support each tier. For a recent cake, he consulted an engineer to make sure his thinking was correct.
“I had to get out my table saw and then of course I had to make it food safe,” he said.
When he was assembling this cake on a recent hot summer day, he moved the table four times before finding a solid surface. Then he painstakingly assembled the cake.
“I looked up and it wasn’t straight,” he said. He panicked when his assistant, Daylan Torres, told him it just needed to settle. Despite all the levels they had used, it was actually straight.
“Then there was a bang,” he said. “I almost had a heart attack.”
But when he looked up, the cake was standing upright.
