No wedding is complete without a wedding cake and there are so many options to choose from. You have the flavors, decorations & design, and shape to decide on – you can be creative and express yourselves as a couple through your wedding cake. Whether it’s a huge cake or small one – you can have it made and designed to exactly the way you like it.  You can use these tips if you are planning a bridal shower too!

Wedding Cake Flavors

There are many wedding cake flavors to decide on. The best way to go is to both agree on a flavor that you both like or you could even have the flavors mixed. Multi-tiered cakes usually allow 3 different flavors!  First, you start with picking the cake flavor. These are just some of the cake flavors that you can choose from; Vanilla, Chocolate, Marble, Lemon, Orange, Coconut, Red Velvet, and Banana. Once you decide on the flavor you can agree on adding a filling to your cake. If you do agree on having a cake with filling these are some of the fillings to mix & match: Vanilla, Chocolate, Raspberry, Strawberry, Caramel, Lemon, and Mango. You can also add flavor syrups such as lemon or raspberry or see if your bakery can make unique cream fillings like mint chocolate, peanut butter, or cappuccino.

Wedding Cake Decor & Design

For a unique wedding cake pick a decor or design that’s going to stand out. Instead of going with the original cake topper with the little, plastic bride and groom you can replace that with a picture of the two of you. It makes your wedding cake different from the usual and your guests will appreciate the uniqueness. If you don’t want just a picture you could get miniature dolls of the two of you specially made to put on top of the cake as a cake topper – this can demonstrate your occupations, hobbies, how you met…anything! To spice up your cake you can add flowers to it or an interesting design – fondant cascading flowers has seemed to be the most popular in 2009 – we’ll see what you choose to be popular for 2010!

Tier Shape on Your Wedding Cake

Cakes come in different shapes and sizes. Some of the most common shapes for wedding cakes are round, square, hexagonal, petal, or Topsy-turvy. Round cakes are thought of as being plain but they actually give you a perfect backdrop for designs and colors. You can add a lot of colorful flowers or just a pleaded pattern. Square cakes are usually the alternative to round cakes – this is a great off-set if you are placing it on a round table. A good idea for square cakes is to outline the pattern with a colorful ribbon on each tier. A hexagonal cake is a six-sided creative square cake that you will want to keep simple. This can save you money because the shape of it is enough decoration to where you don’t need to add too much more decor and design. A petal cake has a flower like appearance to it – what looks best with these cakes is colored flowers and simple design around the cake, just elegant. A Topsy-turvy cake makes a bold statement and is incredably creative and unique. It has each tier made to look as if it’s going to fall. Bold colors and funky designs are best for this type of cake. You can always mix shapes by having a different shape for each tier and be creative to make the tiers look asymetrical as wel – have fun with your cake shape.

Saving Money on Your Wedding Cake

Of course you want to save money on your wedding! We have 2 easy wedding planning tips to cut costs when is comes to the wedding cake.  1.  Cupcake towers have been VERY popular – cupcakes can save you money because it usually costs less per cupcake than per slice of cake and with cupcakes you don’t have to pay a cake-cutting fee at your venue.  2.  If you want a beautiful cake, but still want to save money – another option is to have a small 2 or 3-tiered cake and then sheet cakes in the kitchen.  After you cut your beautiful cake, it will be rolled back into the kitchen with alongside the sheet cakes and guests won’t know whether they are getting the beautiful masterpiece, or the less expensive cake!  Your wedding planner can help you find a bakery that will work with either of these options.

Your wedding cake can be one of the top essentials for your wedding. When choosing your wedding cake make sure it’s something you both are going to enjoy together as well as your guests. It should be a cake that your going to look at and love that when it comes to the time to do the cake cutting you won’t even want to ruin it!  Happy Cake Tasting!

Image 1 via NYC Cake Decorators

Image 2 via Brenda’s Wedding Blog

Image 3 via Cean One Photography

Image 4 via Harvard Photography