How To Save Money On Your Glorious Wedding Cake

Few jobs within the wedding planning process are as much fun as planning your wedding cake. Scouting out cake bakers, flipping through their glossy pages of masterpiece confections, and tasting little samples of wedding cake to find the right flavours has to be one of the most enjoyable parts of the process. The prices, though, can make that entire sticky sweet icing sink to the bottom of your stomach.

Wedding cakes are big business these days, with some bakers charging £1,000 or more for the most beautiful of cake designs. The most lovely, architecturally sound cakes piped to lacy perfection can cost more than your first car. But it is worth it, because the right cake baker can make a world of difference in the appearance, taste, and cost of your cake. So invest some time in scouting out the best cake baker for you.

You might choose to hire the professional at the bakery where your family has gone for special family cakes for years. You know they make great desserts, so you trust them to create the cake of your dreams. Add this well-known professional to your list of contenders, subjecting this baker to the same kind of interview process you'll use for other bakers. After all, making a wedding cake is an art of its own, and even though you know your favourite bakery makes a mean French roll and a cannoli to die for, you will need to be sure that their wedding cake will meet the high standards you expect for a purchase of this magnitude.

Your other contenders might come from recommendations from recently married friends, your coordinator, and recent wedding guests who rave about a cake they've just enjoyed at one of their friend's weddings. Just ask for a referral to the baker in question.

Those structured wedding cakes with four balancing layers and miles of piped-on icing in intricate patterns always cost more than a pretty, stacked cake with pristine white frosting and fresh flowers as decor. With cakes, you will always pay more for the amount of time and effort your baker spends on the design. So keep your choice simple and elegant, pass up those rolled fondant covers and the sugar-paste, hand-rolled flowers and cherubs. Your guests will be just as thrilled by the sight of your beautiful cake cascading with flowers as they will at a cake that looks like the Taj Mahal. Keep it simple, and your price tag will be simpler as well.

You might want to reconsider offering a wedding cake whose tiers balance on pedestals. These designs can cost more, and they're trickier for shipment, arrangement, and stability throughout the reception especially if yours is an outdoor reception where rising temperatures could cause melting and tipping of your cake. Choose instead to have the layers rest directly on top of one another for a more sound structure.

Since the greatest expense with wedding cakes is the time it takes to decorate them, why not order a plain round or sheet cake and do the decorating yourself? Some brides do have the time and talent to actually bake the cake on their own or have a relative do it, but I find that it's not too much of an expense to get a professionally made sheet cake and do the labour-intensive accents yourself for far, far less. If you'd like to decorate your own wedding cake, at a savings of up to 50%, depending upon your choices, you have several options:

1. Visit a florist to find out which fresh flowers are safe to use as decor on wedding cakes. Then place an order for a selection of fresh flowers to be picked up and arranged on the cake on the day of the wedding.

2. Take a cake-decorating course at a local adult night school or culinary school to learn how to pipe sugar-frosting accents onto your cake, create lovely flowers or pearl drop designs, and master other decorating methods.

3. Ask a friend with proven cake-decorating skills to perform her artistry on your cake as her wedding gift to you.

4. Forget the piped-sugar roses or rolled fondant sculptures and decorate a plain store-bought cake with thoroughly washed and dried objects that fit your wedding theme. Some ideas: seashells, mini conch shells, starfish, crystal wedding bells, porcelain figurines, and even flags from your country of heritage. These personal touches are very inexpensive and make great conversation pieces for your guests.

5. Decorate a plain, store-bought cake with your favourite candies, chocolates, or even inexpensive chocolate-dipped fruit. The cost for this might be £20 to £40, rather than £100 and up (way up!) for a standard wedding cake.

If you'd still rather have a professional wedding cake maker, click here.

Article by Roger Mayne of Surrey Weddings wedding directory