Piano Wedding Cake topper

I'd been asked to make a wedding topper for a couple who weren't wanting the traditional wedding and who had a love for music and in particular the piano. Another addition to the topper was to have a small boy figure hiding under the piano to represent their son.

With the topper I started with the piano. I bought some wooden dowels and cut them to about 2" in length, drawn an outline of the piano so I knew where to secured the dowels on the 6" cake board and then put 3 pins in. Next I cut the base of the piano out of foam board to give the main section support, as the bride figure would be sitting on top. Once secured with 3 more pins I placed edible glue around the legs and wrapped them with black sugar paste. Then turned it upside down and covered the bottom of the piano in black sugar paste, so that none of the foam board would be showing once it's all finished. After that I cut a thick piece of black sugar paste about half an inch thick and slightly wider so that it would cover the side of the foam board as well as the top.

Once the piano structure had dried I cut out a section at the front for the keys and then added a lid to the back section so that it had a Grand Piano look to it. For the keys I placed a strip of white fondant and then (with a picture of the keys in front of me) coloured in the black notes and scored the white notes, I couldn't quite fit the right amount of octaves on but it was near enough.

With the piano finished and drying I started working on the figures. I've spoken about figure building before, I'm not very good at getting the faces to look super realistic so I stick to a characterised face.
As I built each figure I always had the piano with me so that I could get the sizing right (not because I couldn't bare to be without it). I thought the most problematic part would be making sure the blokes arms didn't fall of mid ceremony but that wasn't a problem, I think its because I made them slightly smaller and made them look like they were bent slightly, also the piano helped keep them in the right position.

The finished topper was exactly what the customer had asked for and she was thrilled with how it looked, she even brought some photos in to show me the wedding cake all set up with the topper on. It looked really cool and fitted the theme perfectly.