On August 9, Sam (a somewhat-regular poster here) and I got hitched. When we first started planning our wedding, we decided that it had to be cheap, but it certainly didn’t have to be boring. During the initial planning phases, we were chatting with a friend of ours who we had gotten hooked on Katamari Damacy (one of our favorite games of all time). I had bounced around the idea of making the cake topper, and Mark (who took the above photo and did our official wedding photography) suggested I make a Katamari Damacy topper, with bride and groom stuck to the Katamari.

Freaking. BRILLIANT.

After much tortured planning, I came up with a way to do it. First of all, I used Ultra-Light Sculpey clay. It’s fairly inexpensive, easy to use, and unlike Fimo, it’s white, so it can be painted. Plus, the Ultra-Light bit means it’s ideal for making cake toppers – it won’t shmoosh in your cake.

Once I’d come up with a plan, it was time to make the actual figures. I started with the Katamari, of course. Each one of the pieces had the same basic steps: form, bake, sand, paint, shellac.

As you can see in the above photo, I did have some tools to help me out – a clay sculpting kit, x-acto knife, ziploc baggies, and a straight water glass (in this case by Pom). The clay sculpting kit helped make small details, the x-acto helped cut straight into the clay, ziploc baggies kept the clay moist in between sessions, and the water glass was helpful when I needed to roll clay flat and even.

The most tedious part was sanding the pieces. It took the most time, and had many stages. I had to start with the most grainy sandpaper to smooth out major roughness (it’s impossible to bake out a perfect piece, particularly if you’re a noob like me), then working on down to the least grain to make it nice n’ soft. After that, I cleaned the pieces with a soft cloth to make sure there was no dust. Then I painted them in Katamari colors with acrylics, waited for that to dry, then finished with a clear shellac to make it shiny and to make sure the colors stayed put.

For the base, I kind of cut things a bit closely. I couldn’t order the cake too early, so it was about two weeks before the wedding when the entire thing was finished. This was mostly because I had to be sure that the topper would fit on top of the cake, and I had to know the final dimensions of the top layer. Vicki, the talent and brains behind Fantasy Wedding Cakes in Las Vegas, helped Sam and I come up with a great design, then let me know how large the top layer would be. I then constructed the base and super glued the components I had together.

I didn’t make all the components. I knew I didn’t have the sculpting chops to do everything, but I had an idea. I bought the little wedding cake (I can’t resist a meta joke, can you?), the goblets, and the champagne bottle from a dollhouse distributor. I then super glued those to the Katamari.

It was a hit the night of the wedding. My favorite thing about it was hearing someone describe a bunch of people surrounding the cake, with those who understood the topper explaining it to those who didn’t. I’d like to think we made a few Katamari fans that night.

As a bit of a sad afternote, the topper right now isn’t in the best of shape. Sam and I had a flat tire when we were driving from Las Vegas back to our home in Los Angeles. We were pulled over, fully into the emergency shoulder, when a truck sideswiped us. We’re lucky to be alive, but the car was totaled and we had to take a flight back to L.A. I didn’t have the heart to check the box that contained the cake topper until a day or two after we got back. I knew that even though it had been wrapped nicely and tucked into a box, it had been through a lot of violence. It mostly looks undamaged, but parts of the base, the thinnest part, is just about powder. I’m going to repair it as much as I can, but if I have to, I can reconstruct the base, and maybe even make it better than before.

Even if I don’t get around to it, the memories of that night will remain with us and a lot of other people for a long time.