How to start looking for the perfect wedding cake
Couples have pretty much not given wedding cakes a thought until they decide to buy one. The different styles available are overwhelming, and there’s no way of knowing if the price you have been quoted by one cake designer is fair unless you spend a lot of time consulting many others.
If you’ve decided on having a wedding cake, consider the following and it should narrow down your search.
How many servings do you need? If your cake is to be served as dessert to your guests at the table it will need to yield exactly one dessert portion per guest. A dessert portion is usually the whole height of a tier and roughly 1x2 inches across the top. So a modern 8 inch tier, which will be 5-6 inches tall, will yield 24 portions. If you are already having a dessert, you could have smaller finger portions, which are slimmer, so the same 8in tier would yield 40.
What style of cake would suit your celebration? Romantic, maximalist, geometric, classic, kitsch or rustic, there are cake designers in every niche. What is the style of your venue? A stately home, castle or historic venue may suit a classic or baroque style, while an art gallery or modern hotel may suit something more minimal. Do you want your cake to incorporate the flowers you have chosen to decorate your venue, or provide a visual contrast? Does your bridal gown have a motif or some detailing that could be carried over into your cake design?
Do you have a budget? Very generally speaking a traditional fondant wedding cake will be decorated with inedible sugar flowers, which are painstakingly hand-modelled over a period of weeks. This will be the most expensive option, especially if your cake designer is well-known. A semi-naked cake dressed with fresh flowers will probably be the cheapest option, and in the middle range there are piped, painted and sculpted cakes, which are decorated with buttercream or ganache. These cakes are entirely edible, very characterful and increasingly popular.
Once you’ve decided on the style of cake you’d like, search for cake makers within roughly 30 miles of your venue, as this is the maximum distance most will travel for delivery, unless the cake will be very large and you have a sizeable budget. Look at the gallery on each cake designer’s website and images on their Instagram grid. Most good cake designers will have developed a distinctive style of cake that will become obvious quite quickly. Don’t limit yourselves to the businesses recommended by your venue.
Hopefully these will be a maker within the area of your venue that works in the style you have chosen. If you have decided on a traditional fondant cake, any decent fondant cake maker with sugar flowers in their repertoire will probably be able to meet your requirements. They will not, however, be able to create a floral cake with buttercream or ganache, unless they have recently trained to do so. Likewise a cake maker like myself, who specialises in sculpted or painted buttercream and ganache will not be able to create a fondant cake.
Most cake makers will be able to supply a naked or semi naked cake, but may be reluctant to as it offers little creative scope and the success of the cake will be entirely reliant on the quality (and foodsafety) of the flowers provided by your florist. Naked cakes dry out quickly so most suppliers will insist on a very late delivery. This is not a cake to be installed and admired throughout the day!
I’m Emma Page. I create and supply sculpted buttercream and ganache wedding cakes throughout London and the Southeast and run an online cake school. My cakes have appeared in numerous blogs, magazines, websites and on national television. If you would like to chat with me about the design for your wedding cake you can email me on emma@emmapagecakes.co.uk