Paula Conover of the Charlotte Inn first started collecting vintage wedding toppers after a friend gifted her one. Now she has a collection of over 40 unique designs. Her wedding cake topper collection is currently on display at The Carnegie Heritage Center in Edgartown, in an exhibit called Love Takes the Cake.
Sissy Biggers at Vineyard Preservation Trust wanted to show the collection in June because the Island is such a popular wedding destination this time of year. She said many brides and grooms have stopped by to see the exhibit.
“With the wedding toppers, I wanted to incorporate Vineyard weddings, and weddings that are on our properties at Vineyard Preservation Trust. I thought that was a really nice synergy,” Ms. Biggers said.
The vintage cake toppers were arranged in glass display cabinets alongside other wedding trinkets such as custom matchboxes inscribed with names and dates of couples, two fake wedding cakes and a few Tiffany ring boxes.
Carefully penned wedding invitations from past Island ceremonies were also placed among the cake toppers. Ms. Biggers even included an invitation from her own daughter’s wedding at the Union Chapel.
“Showing the contemporary invitations is sort of a complement to the vintage wedding toppers,” Ms. Biggers said. “We are really showcasing the weddings and the historic buildings that house them, which is sort of the context for the wedding toppers.”
Over at the Charlotte Inn, Ms. Conover said she didn’t even have a wedding cake topper at her own wedding, but she loves the story behind the ones she collects.
“A few of the ones I had collected had a little story with them, one of them said ‘This was my mother and father’s cake, and they were married this day,’” she said. “Stuff like that is amazing, you wish they could talk.”
Ms. Conover noted that sometimes the history of each topper can be hard to find because the base breaks down from the icing of the wedding cakes they were set on. She mostly gets the cake toppers at antique shops when she and her husband go antiquing, or on ebay.
“I love the history of things, so obviously we have lots of collections of things around here,” Ms. Conover said. “We have silver, headboxes, flashlights, books....I just think if you’re a collector, you’re a collector.”
This is her first time having a collection on display, and she hopes the exhibit will inspire other Island residents to show collections that they have.
“The history here is one of the great things about the Island, the multiple generations and things,” she said. “There’s a lot of these stories out there, it’s kind of just serendipity and hearing about how somebody has something.”
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