What to know before you order your wedding cake
Long gone are fruit cakes covered in marzipan! Instead, we now see marvelous creations that take days, and sometimes weeks of meticulous craftsmanship. Finding a baker to the likes of La Moraine Cakes can be quite tricky. Being leaders in their industry, these very skilled cake artists share some of their wisdom. Read on to find out how you should go about choosing this important cake for your special day.
Let’s eat some cake!
According to the experts, you must first know your wedding date, the venue, and guest count before you should even think about booking your cake tasting appointment. Something brides don’t always know is that bakers are swamped with orders during wedding season. So, if your wedding is in high season, it is best to book your cake before your baker’s diary gets too full.
The venue makes a big difference in your cake selection. If you like a rustic, naked cake-look, but booked a venue with a royal look and feel, your cake will stick out like a sore thumb. Something to also keep in mind is the height of the ceiling: rather stack your tiers on columns to get height in larger areas and go for stacked cakes in smaller spaces.
Where portion sizes are concerned, you should have a good idea of how many guests will attend. For every hundred guests invited you will need roughly three tiers of cake to feed them. As soon as you have those three things sorted out, you should go ahead and book the cake tasting appointment.
How should you choose the design?
The obvious answer is that you first need to pick your theme and colors before you can start with the wedding cake design. Let Pinterest become your best friend – save a couple of ideas from there and take them along to your cake tasting appointment. Not only will your baker be able to give you a better quote, but also give their recommendations. Just remember to be realistic – many of the cakes you see on the web are styled by professionals, and many of those aren’t even real cakes!
When choosing icing and decorations, keep the season and venue in mind. Chocolate and cream melt, so having a chocolate-covered cake in summer at a venue in the bush will spell disaster. Rather opt for a fondant-covered cake instead.
You should also keep the design in harmony with the venue. As previously said, a mismatched cake will be an eyesore.
A big trend currently is mini cakes. They are substantially more costly, as they take longer to decorate, and each needs their own (sometimes custom-made) box. Should this luxury be within your budget, it will make quite an impression on your guests.
Penny-pinching tips for a tight budget
A lot of brides want big wedding cakes, but big sizes mean big money too. A clever hack is to replace the bottom tiers with decorated Styrofoam dummy tiers. It will look impressive and not one of the guests will know that they are fake.
Some brides compromise on their cake designs to make up for size. Should you not want to tone down your decorations, you can order a smaller, but perfect, cake, and have extra sheet cakes at the back to feed your guests.
