As a bride, you’re supposed to have something old. Along with something blue and something new.

But for one family, it was the ‘something old’ part of that which would prove to stand the test of time.

It just took time and random luck to find it again, decades after the wedding day.

Ronald Warninger, of Washington, said he remembered the stories of his grandparents’ wedding cake, remembering his parents had kept it in their freezer. 

“My grandparents didn’t have a good freezer and my folks bought one of those upright freezers and I remember it being packed in tin foil and being told, ‘You’re not allowed to touch that,’ but that was it. There was never any plans for it, nobody ever talked about it.”

A 100-year-old wedding cake that was preserved in a hatbox. Photo courtesy of the Warninger family

His grandparents, Inez and Harvey Warninger, were married on March 17, 1915. More than 100 years later, after their anniversary had passed the century mark, his sister called wondering if he knew what had happened to the old cake.

“I knew it was the 100-year mark because my sister called me on the anniversary and asked if I had the cake and I couldn’t find it,” he recalled. “We looked around and thought it was in the basement but it wasn’t.”

I had given up on it completely and she wasn’t happy with that, but I had kind of given up on it.”

But now, a few years later, Warninger said he had decided to clean out his garage. And there it was. Placed inside a kettle, was a hatbox. And inside that hatbox was the more than 100-year-old cake.

“I’m retired now and I thought I’ve got to condense some of this stuff,” Warninger said. “I looked in there and it was this hatbox and I definitely recognized that, and I knew the cake was in there. It was in the garage on a shelf way up high.”

The siblings are thrilled with the cake’s discovery.

“Just the fact that this cake made it through like this is incredible,” he said. “It’s in perfect shape. It’s been in and out of freezers and been handled a lot.”

Its lived through a couple world wars.”

The inside of a 100-year-old wedding cake that was preserved in a hatbox. Photo courtesy of the Warninger family

Also located was a poem from his grandmother Inez’s friends that seemed to know that the cake would be around for a long time. Written in 1905, it read: It read: ‘Dear Inez, Remember me when far away, and only half awake. ‘Remember me on your wedding day, and send me a slice of cake.’

There are no plans though to eat the cake now. While the cake is perfectly preserved and as beautiful as the day it was made, it now “kind of hollowed out inside” with icing that “sounds like porcelain when you tap it with your fingernail,” Warninger said.

“I’m just glad it reappeared,” he said. “I felt a little responsible for it. It is just the top of a wedding cake, but how many people have those all these years later? It’s just like a time capsule. I hope to pass it along to one of my kids and maybe they’ll keep it for another 100 years.”

What an amazing treasure to find. A long life lived well and a wedding cake that keeps going and symbolizes that wonderful moment in time.

Watch below for a look at the preserved wedding cake!

Sources: ABC | Little Things | Daily Mail