spin spin sugar

Although I think about cake all the time (all the time, really) I haven’t given much thought at all to cake toppers until recently. I really enjoy the vintage ones with the smush-faced tuxedoed groom and fluffy-gowned bride, but no one in my family has one. And to me, it just wouldn’t be as good to buy one, new or vintage. Besides, that might be a little formal for what we're doing.
Maid of honor Katie gave me a set of salt and pepper shakers that immediately said Wedding to me. (This is not usually worth taking seriously – I’ve noticed that nearly everything says Wedding when you have Wedding on the brain.)
But then I saw Mrs. Cookie’s photos, and hey. Look at the top of her cake! They must have said Wedding to her, too.
I’m also really liking the nest of flowers, and the overconfident DIY enthusiast in me thinks I can pull it off.

But. But, but, wait. A couple of weeks ago I took DJ out to dinner for his birthday to a fancy French restaurant. It’s owned by a husband and wife team, and the wife is a pastry chef. She’s a chef of other things too, of course. But definitely of pastries. The dessert I ordered (again, no picture, sorry) was not just delicious, it was gorgeous. Pomegranate mousse atop a very thin brownie, topped with a crown of spun sugar filled with berries.

The crown was more or less along these lines, but a little bigger and with finer strands. More like a crown.
I got sidetracked in my Google Images search for spun sugar, and found this cool cage of sugar:
And just look at this cake, with the spun sugar “straw”!
So you get where this is going. Now I want a buttercream frosted cake with a few buttercream roses, topped with a spun sugar crown filled with flowers, and a side of birdie salt and pepper shakers perched on the lip of the middle layer. This has gotten alarmingly specific.