The day of our wedding arrived sunny and a bit windy, and around the same time the hair and makeup people got started on the ladies, my father and FIL were on their way to Mount Lawley.

Blake's solution to the croquembouche delivery problem (being that Scents of Taste don't deliver) was to volunteer his dad to do it. And because it's a 2-person job and my dad didn't have anything scheduled in that morning, I volunteered my dad to help out.

Instructing our dads on what needed to be done was an event in and of itself. You see, the croquembouche not only needed to be transported in an air-conditioned car, it also needed to be stored in an air-conditioned room. You can't put it in a fridge because when you take it out on a hot day, the temperature and humidity differential will cause the sugar to do something weird and then the whole thing is likely to fall apart. Our venue didn't have a suitable room (I was loathe to ask them to blast their a/c all day in a big room just for the croquembouche), so the plan was to take it to my parents' hotel room where they could blast the a/c at no extra cost. They were also near the venue, which worked out well.

It's important to note that my parents had no earthly idea what a croquembouche was - "why would you make the cream puffs into a TOWER?", so we told our fathers that the croquembouche was going to come in two pieces - for ease of transport and to be assembled later on - the confusion was palpable. To some extent I think my dad in particular was a bit horrified at being entrusted with an important part of the wedding. Blake's dad was much more of the "we've been told to do it, so we're just going to get it done" attitude, which I think was a nice foil to my dad's attempts to pre-problem-solve the process to perfection (surprising no one, since he's an overachiever with 2 engineering degrees).

My dad, who had watched Guardians of the Galaxy on the flight down to Singapore from Beijing earlier that month, christened him and my FIL as the Guardians of the Croquembouche. "I am Puff." Freakin' dad jokes, I swear.

If there were any dramas getting it from the bakery to the hotel room, I haven't been told, but my father did deign to tell me that on the second leg of the journey - from the hotel room to the venue later in the afternoon - the mission came dramatically close to disaster.

My mother was in charge of driving from the hotel to the venue while my dad (again) took care of the croquembouche in the back seat. Now, to be perfectly clear, my mum's an excellent driver in that she is attentive and careful and has a great sense of direction. It helps that my dad is an excellent navigator - when he's in the front seat.

Long story short, there was at least one very sharp turn taken perhaps a tad too quickly, and the whole croquembouche almost flew off the tray, and I'm relatively certain my father now has a heart condition.

Then, after arriving at the venue, they had to take it a flight of stairs to be stored in a room with a/c for the last couple of hours before the wedding started.

Someone - I don't know exactly who, but probably my dad since he has told me under no uncertain circumstances that I owe him huge for this - apparently tripped while carrying the croquembouche up the stairs and the whole thing almost ended up on the floor. I think my dad ate one of the spare loose profiteroles right then just as payment for his trouble.

Sizing up our opponent. Photo by Allison Low.

The stress of the mission, I think, was unlike anything my father had experienced since before he retired. I love him, my mum, and my FIL dearly for taking on guardianship of the croquembouche, and would have loved them even if it DID end in disaster. That it did end up getting there undamaged was amazing and sincerely appreciated. And made the last bit all the more hilarious.

Theresa, who runs Swanbrook, informed us that the traditional way to serve a croquembouche is to knock the top of it off with a bottle of champagne. Blake loved this idea immediately while I was losing my mind - my parents would have disowned us if, after all their trouble, we managed to knock the whole damn thing onto the floor anyway!

It was by far the most emotionally intense wedding dessert service I have ever witnessed. We had Theresa on standby in case we did manage to knock the whole thing over, and while we were meant to hold the bottle of champagne together, I really just kind of placed my fingertips somewhere on the bottle and didn't actually grip it. I did not want to be responsible if it went pear-shaped.

Blake took a couple of practice swings, which I think was enough to give my mother a heart attack, and then came the moment of truth. I must clarify that Blake was every bit as nervous as I was, given that he had no idea what he was doing.

Thankfully, as you can likely guess from the fact that my parents are, in fact, still talking to me, it went quite well - the topmost profiterole popped off the tower and fell with an unceremonious "plop" onto the serving table, and the rest of it didn't budge at all. The cheers of the gathered crowd were accompanied by my own shriek of absolute relief.

It was delicious, it was amazing, it was a perfect combination of drama and comedy. The Guardians of the Croquembouche accomplished their mission with resounding success.