Cake for thought- lessons learned

So, I love cake. I dreamed about the wedding cake so much. I think I tried out 5 bakeries and fawned over the details more than my dress. And actually paid more for the cakes! I had a 3-tier 6"8"10" with different flavors - fresh blackberry filling top tier, strawberry champagne middle, and almond cake with almond buttercream filling on bottom and almond buttercream over the whole cake. I surprised my FH with a groom's cake that was a 2-tier 6"8" with strawberry cake on top and chocolate cake on bottom with chocolate buttercream all over. I also had gorgeous cookies made that represented our daughters' initials. And some gluten free cupcakes.

My advice to heed in your planning based on my wedding experience:
1) Make sure you AND your groom get a piece! The party was so fun and my groom was so busy socializing that he didn't slow down enough to have a piece of his cake. I wish I had made sure he did. I mean, I had 2 pieces lol.
2) Bring a knife! I rented a cake spatula and knife from my wedding coordinator. She rents out a bunch of small things like that which was less hassle for me. However, it was dainty and not practical for cutting cake. Since this was all she had to work with, all the cake pieces came out all jacked up! Like a ball of cake mush on a plate. It was obviously a challenge for her and people had to wait a long time before getting a piece. Granted, perhaps she should have known this but since my venue didn't have a kitchen, I should have thought to pack one.
3) Cut the cake early. I had it 45 minutes after dinner and people were already getting tired. So I asked them to do it earlier than scheduled. Because of the challenges with the cutting, it took a long time to hand out pieces and some people left without having cake despite the fact that we had to-go boxes. They just couldn't get them cut fast enough while people were still interested in having cake. Therefore I have a ton of beautiful cake plates and forks leftover that didn't get used.
4) Take your own photos of the cake table (and everything else important to you). I have zero pictures of the cakes! I'm waiting on the professional photos which will take a few weeks and I know she has some. But I WISH I had taken pictures of everything with my own phone so I could admire and share them now.
5) Don't have different flavor tiers. Eventhough having different flavors offers variety, it holds up the line. People had to hear the options, wait for the certain tier to be cut, go back if it wasn't cut yet, etc.. and the bottom tier had just barely been cut into by the end of the night. So I don't think anyone got a piece of the best flavor!
6) Grab a couple of pieces to-go before your farewell. I had to-go boxes but I forgot to grab some for myself. Definitely could have enjoyed leftover cake for breakfast the morning after!!
Obviously I have lots of thoughts about this aspect of the wedding LOL. Of course, none of this is devastating and my wedding was amazing. If you don't really care about cake that's fine, but I'm sure there are other brides who love it and hopefully appreciate my thoughts from my experience. When I get the professional photos I will share them. They were really beautiful.