Ninni's Bakery

DO NOT ORDER YOUR WEDDING CAKE FROM NINNI’S UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE!
First, let me say, I LOVE Ninni’s wedding cake and cookies. That’s why I decided to order my wedding cake there even though it was the first cake I tasted. I didn’t give any other bakeries a chance, I was so in love with the authenticity of their cake’s taste. I drew a sketch of what I wanted my cake to look like, and spent about 30 minutes carefully going over the cake’s design with two staff members. One of them even photocopied my design and kept it with the order, assuring me the cake would be beautiful and it would look as close as they could get it. My design involved flowers- sort of like tiger lillies, but simplier, I had just drawn them to give a general idea but explained I did not want roses or calla lillies. They told me they would probably use silk flowers to make it prettier and easier to construct, but if they could find some of an appropriate size they would even try to use real flowers. They basically described to me the Sistine Chapel of wedding cakes. I was BEYOND excited. I was also really happy because they helped me save money by advising me to order a cake for 100 people even though my guest list was at 125. They assured me most people end up with a lot of leftover cake. So, the day of my wedding came. The first thing I saw when I arrived at the venue was the cake. I looked at it and asked one of the venue staff, “This isn’t my cake, right? Is this for something else?” No. This was my cake. It was TINY. TINY TINY TINY. And COMPLETELY HIDEOUS. It had dark gray ribbons around it (I requested and drew light silver), and the flowers I’d been promised were HARD PLASTIC calla lillies that had been BADLY airbrushed neon pink. I did NOT draw or request anything REMOTELY like that. It was so ugly and so far from what I had imagined for my special day, I actually cried because I was already super stressed about the day to begin with (I had done all the planning completely by myself with very minimal help from my now husband, who had time constraints due to being in the military, and I only had 5 months to plan it because we were PSCing to another base and we wanted to have a big family wedding before we left). Not only was this cake HIDEOUS and APPALLING, it was FAR TOO SMALL. The venue staff who was usually the one in charge of cutting and serving the cake assured me very anxiously that this cake would not even feed 100 people. I ended up having 131 guests. I called Ninni’s, trying to be polite even though I was completely distraught and couldn’t believe I had paid upwards of FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS for this fiasco, and asked them to bring in another cake. I even offered to pay for it. They said they couldn’t, there’s nothing they can do, the baker/decorator/SOMEONE wasn’t there who needed to be, they couldn’t make another delivery here (it was a 10 minute drive if you follow speed limits religiously), and then the woman on the phone started raising her voice at me and arguing with me- a bride on my wedding day trying to make things go as planned! I will admit that of course I got upset when she refused to help me out in any way whatsoever, and when she kept telling me that cake would DEFINITELY feed 125 people, so I yelled back at her. That’s rude and immature but I’ll own up to it. Having gotten nowhere, I resorted to carefully removing their horrible fake plastic flowers from my cake, and I cut up one of the centerpieces I had painstakingly constructed myself to use the small flowers from that to re-decorate my cake. It still looked bad, but, I felt a little better because at least replacing those hard plastic calla lillies with expensive silk flowers was an improvement to its looks. I’m still not sure why they used such cheap, ugly flowers on my cake, since I paid $500-something for it and ordered it more than a month in advance. (Actually, it took me THREE attempts to even order it- I tried to order it 5 months in advance, and they said that was too far ahead of time; then I tried 2 months in advance and they refused to take my order over the phone, even though I only wanted to reserve my date since they only do one cake a day). Anyway, the end result was that someone did eventually bring out a second cake from Ninni’s. It was a tiny 10" round that was supposed to feed 16 people. The cakes were both hideous, the staff yelled at me on my wedding day while I was trying to resolve a problem- and was initially as polite, put-together, and accommodating to THEM as I could be in such an awful situation- and we did NOT have enough cake even with the second one they oh-so-sweetly brought me. Not only did I not get to try my own wedding cake, a few of my bridesmaids didn’t, and several of the guests I spoke to said they didn’t get any cake either when I asked them about it. By several, I mean upwards of 10. This place is outrageous. I can’t believe how they treated me. Now I know why they make you pay in advance.