Having Your Cake: The Possibilities Are Endless, And Some Choose None At All
One can just imagine the generational conflicts over wedding cakes. Modern daughter wants a Mad Hatter wedding cake. Mom and Dad are appalled.
Today, cupcakes wedding cakes, ice cream wedding cakes, two- flavored, three-flavored, designer or traditional. They can be formed into different shapes, have fondant appliques, or ribbons or fresh flowers. They can even be Styrofoam. (Some bakers will provide a fake cake for display purposes and the edible cake will be a sheet cake back in the kitchen where it will be cut and plated nicely.)
Or, there can be no cake at all. “Probably about 10 per cent of couples don’t have any cake at all,” says wedding planner Geneve McNally of An Event To Remember. “If the wedding cake is a secondary wedding dessert with the dinner, 70 per cent of the time, it’s tossed out. Catering staff see so many wedding cakes get tossed out. Rather than spend $800 on a cake, couples would rather put it toward making their wedding an amazing and worthwhile experience for the guests.”
For the 90 per cent who like the tradition of cutting a cake, expect to spend $500 to $700, on average, for a cake for 100 guests. One of the big cupcakes wedding cakes players, April Bellia of April Bellia Wedding Cakes, specializes in rolled fondant cakes for a modern look.
“My cakes are simple but elegant and custom designed to suit the wedding,” she says. Custom designing might mean the bride brings in a picture of her wedding dress and Bellia will pick up on the beading and lace work and duplicate the pattern on to the cake. Or she’ll use fresh flowers mimicking the bride’s bouquet or pick up on a colour theme.
“I like vibrant colours, the dark pinks and oranges, or I go totally opposite and do everything monochromatic, using different shades of the same colour.” Some feel the fondant is too sweet, but Bellia likes its stability and clean, matte finish. “I tell people it tastes like marshmallows,” she says. The most popular request is for chocolate cake inside, she says.
McNally isn’t a fan of cupcakes wedding cakes unless done properly. Cupcakes, the store, she says, does it well. “They send the girls in, dressed in black pants with pink cupcake T-shirts and a pink hanky in their back pocket. It’s a fun thing and their cupcakes are gorgeous and delicious.”
Don’t try doing it yourself, McNally says. It will look home- baked. “If you don’t want to serve the cake as the main dessert, I usually recommend that they order a cake for half or three-quarters of their guests and serve it later at night, or keep it for gift- opening the next day or a get-together. A few people still freeze it and save it for their one-year anniversary or the birth of their first child,” she says.
At McNally’s own wedding, she had profiteroles with strawberries with chocolate sauce for dessert. She asked the catering staff to cut up the middle and bottom tiers and lay the pieces out with forks but only half of that was eaten. The tier that she took home never made it to the freezer. “If you want to freeze it, give it as a job for someone else to do. I was so busy, I ended up throwing mine out.”
