Wedding cake (practice)

My Dad is getting married in September and I will be making the cake. I am very excited but the pressure is on. Usually when I make a cake it is just for fun, so if I mess it up nobody will ever know. With this cake, that is NOT the situation. 

I will be making a three tiered German Chocolate Cake. Each of the the three tiers will have chocolate frosting in the middle. My Dad's favorite cake is the German Chocolate that my grandma used to make and she is unfortunately no longer with us. To commemorate her, this is the chosen wedding cake flavor. 

Now as many of us know, german chocolate cake is delicious but not very pretty. Lucky for me they are having a beach themed wedding. So I have come up with the idea to ground the coconut and pecans in the frosting down to tiny pieces, thus giving the frosting a more similar appearance to sand. 

I practiced this cake for the first time a few days ago. Although I feel it turned out pretty good for a 'rough draft' the process was not very easy. I just moved into my new apartment in Halmstad and we do not have the appliances or modern baking convenience that makes this kind of adventure quick and easy. That being said, I spent close to 14 hours over the span of three days making the rough draft cake. 

Difficulties that I will not have to undergo again=
- Not having an electric mixer
-Not having multiple (or the right size) baking pan
- Making my own cake boards
-Making a 3 tiered cake in which one must use support ( I used plastic straws and it worked great!)
-Not having a blender (to blend the pecans and coconut)
- Making my own 'sea shells' with white chocolate 
-etc, the list goes on as I had almost none of the tools I needed.

This... is how it turned out:

The shells will look better when they are store bought and my dad's fiance bought a beautiful cake topper to take the place of my white chocolate hearts (which actually turned out better than I thought). Also, the 'sand' will be crushed nilla waffers rather than crushed rice cake and brown sugar (it was raining and I did not want to go to the store just for cookies). The dots around the cake bases that look awful will be those nice edible pearls. And I am pretty sure that when I have three cake pans, the size they are supposed to be, the cakes themselves will be more even. 

I am always hard on myself and although this is not perfect, I think it came out okay considering the inconveniences and the first time attempt at a tiered cake.