Choosing a wedding cake is one of the most fun wedding planning tasks – guaranteed! But what goes into making such an important decision? There are three key factors, and in this episode, we’ve got some special guests and wedding cake experts sharing their pro tips!
A HUGE thank you to our special guests, Sarah from Miscellany Cakes and Lee from The Cake Specialist.
Episode breakdown
1. Wedding Cake Flavours
Expert tips from Sarah of Miscellany Cakes:
Choose the flowers that you love – eliminate the stress of trying to please all of your guests. Allow your wedding cake flavour choices to reflect what you like!
Tropical coconut and lime flavour – in the end they chose it because they loved it and the guests loved it too.
Most popular choices: red velvet, lemon and chocolate.
You could choose more than one flavour for a multi-tier cake – vanilla with a victoria sponge, for example!
2. Wedding Cake Style and Design
Expert tips from Lee of The Cake Specialist:
Look at your venue!
Relaxed venue: naked cake, or a cake iced with buttercream, fresh flowers or something rustic (like a wooden cake stand).
Formal venue: cake with sugar icing or fondant, more straight lines or stencilling on the icing, sugar flowers (large, bold ones like peonies or roses, or tiny beautiful flowers), sugar pearls.
Chocolate lace collars!
Remember it’s your wedding cake, your wedding day, you choose whatever you dream of!
3. Wedding Cake Size
Remember that not everybody will want to enjoy a slice of cake!
Estimate how much cake you will need by asking yourself:
- Do you want a slice per guest?
- Would you like any cake to be leftover?
- What size would you like each slice to be?
Standard wedding cake serving is:
1 inch by 2 inches or for a slightly larger slice, 1.5 inches by 2 inches
Cake sizing = the diameter of the inside of the cake pan.
Round wedding cake sizes:
- Round 6-inch cake: 12 servings
- Round 8-inch cake: 24 servings
- Round 10-inch cake: 38 servings
- Round 12-inch cake: 56 servings
- Round 14-inch cake: 78 servings
- Round 16-inch cake: 100 servings
Square wedding cake sizes:
- Square 6-inch cake: 18 servings
- Square 8-inch cake: 32 servings
- Square 10-inch cake: 50 servings
- Square 12-inch cake: 72 servings
- Square 14-inch cake: 98 servings
- Square 16-inch cake: 128 servings
Other factors to consider when choosing the size of your wedding cake:
- Other desserts being served on the day (provide enough total options for each guest to enjoy 1.5 items – a slice of cake and a brownie, for example)
- Saving the top tier – don’t include this in your total if you want to do it.
- The size of the venue – a small cake may get lost in a grand castle (if you don’t need a big cake, add a dummy tier to make it look bigger).
- Serving style – if you plan to serve a slice to each guest for dessert, make sure you have enough for each person to get the same sized slice. If you plan to cut the cake later in the evening after dancing has begun, not everybody will make their way over to the cake table to grab a slice.
