Cake Delivered; Fergie’s Dad Lashes Press

A five-tiered, 240-pound wedding cake and an identical backup cake were delivered to Buckingham Palace today for the royal wedding bash of Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson as the bride’s father attacked the media for constantly “harping” about his daughter’s weight.

Among the early guests arriving for Wednesday’s “private” wedding ceremony was Nancy Reagan, who flew in Sunday night accompanied by 20 Secret Service agents.

She was to visit a polo club near Windsor Castle this morning and was to attend a private dinner and dance hosted by Sarah’s father, Maj. Ronald Ferguson, this evening.

The cake was taken to Buckingham Palace and a stand-in cake identical to the first arrived in a second van in case anything happens to the original.

Baked by Navy Chefs

The cake, which was baked by Royal Navy chefs in Cornwall, will feed 2,000 on Wednesday and reportedly contains a dose of rum and other spirits--as is the Royal Navy tradition. Prince Andrew is a navy helicopter pilot.

The 5-foot 6-inch cake, baked to a secret recipe, took 10 weeks to make, the chefs said.

Mystery surrounded the iced figure of Pegasus, the mythological winged horse, which was put on the cake’s third tier under instructions from Ferguson.

Cmdr. Andrew Slater, the head of the Royal Navy school that supplied the cake, said: “Miss Ferguson requested that Pegasus appear. But the reasons were not explained to me.”

Bee on a Thistle

The horse appears on the cake next to Ferguson’s family coat of arms, a bee on a thistle with the motto “Out of Adversity Comes Happiness.”

In a magazine interview, Maj. Ferguson blasted the media for constantly harping on his daughter’s weight. Some newspapers have called her downright fat.

“She’ll be whatever weight she wants to be and what Andrew wants her to be,” the veteran polo player said. “If that’s not what the media want, then it’s too bad. . . . The point is that Andrew fell in love with her the way she is.”