This Man Found A 100-Year-Old Wedding Cake While Cleaning His Garage

    Some couples preserve their cake for their first anniversary, some save it forever.

    Terri Pous
    by Terri Pous

    BuzzFeed Staff

    Many couples preserve the top tier of their wedding cake to eat on their first anniversary.

    ABC / Via youtube.com

    Sure, it may taste stale and freezer burnt after a year, but tradition is tradition, goddamn it.

    Ronald Warninger's grandparents did just that after their March 17, 1915 wedding. However, they never got around to enjoying their cake a second time.

    Courtesy of Ronald Warninger

    Warninger found the top tier of their wedding cake in his garage this year, the 100th anniversary of his grandparents' wedding.

    Courtesy of Ronald Warninger

    After her husband Harvey died in 1944, Inez Warninger gave the cake to Ronald's parents around 1960, "because they had a better freezer," he told BuzzFeed Life.

    "I knew it dated way back into the teens, and that I wasn't allowed to touch it, but that’s all I really knew," he added.

    Warninger brought the cake to his home in the early 2000s, and by that time, "it had already been petrified." He knew the cake was important, but he promptly forgot where he put it. He was organizing his Yakima, Washington, garage in November when he uncovered the antique dessert on a shelf, perfectly preserved inside a hatbox.

    The cake is totally inedible, but, "for 100 years old, it’s really good shape," Warninger said.

    Courtesy of Ronald Warninger

    The cake's layers disintegrated long ago, but that the rock-hard, "porcelain-like" icing is still practically perfect, with jut a few cracks. Only a chunk of the "sponge-like" (and still white!) cake remains.

    His grandmother's memory book was also in the hatbox, which amazingly includes a note from a friend mentioning her wedding cake.

    Courtesy of Ronald Warninger

    The note was written 10 years before Inez and Harvey Warninger got married.

    As for why his grandparents never ate the rest of their cake, Waringer says they "probably got too busy."

    Courtesy of Ronald Warninger

    His daughter Jenny now has the family heirloom; she hopes to preserve it for another generation.

    Elaine Benes would approve.

    NBC / Via youtube.com