Cupcake Tree

so i decided early on that i wanted to do cupcakes instead of a traditional wedding cake.

i wasnt sure how to display them, i found lots of great pics on theknot.com but having such a large guestlist, i needed something big. (and cheap)

i found lots of instructions on how to make a cupcake stand similar to this one at Cake Journal

i remembered when we cleared out the storage i found some huge long heavy duty cardboard tubing that we can cut into the risers and then either cut cardboard or buy cake rounds.

so i bought cake circles from michaels to save the work of cutting perfect circles out of cardboard. i got as many as i thought for just about $24.

then i stumbled upon http://www.cupcaketree.com/

and this bad boy. Size: 21" high - 34" wide, 4" between discs (they do offer smaller as well as square trees also)

he holds up to 150-300 cupcakes. so i found the receipt to michaels and took back the cardboard circles and ordered him.

He came in the mail in just a few days and was very easy to assemble (and disassemble, for now) originally i thought spray painting would be easiest, but the slots would show up if i painted it, also the edges were raw, cut cardboard, and the bottom couple levels were folded in half for shipping. so i am currently looking for decorative paper, i'm thinking wrapping paper would work well and be large enough.

$39.95 + $10 shipping. costing more than the materials if i would have DIYed it, but the fun part of the DIY is decorating, not building, so this was a perfect compromise for me.

the wrapping paper idea made me think, we can easily repurpose this as a treat stand at Christmas, (2 months after the wedding) we can remove the bottom level or 2 and use a green paper and add mini ornaments and bows, make it look like a Christmas tree.