Wedding Cake Inspiration - Where To Start?

At the beginning of designing a wedding cake, brides (and it is usually the brides!) are often a little stumped as to what they want from a cake. I offer a completely bespoke service, and it can be daunting working from a blank canvas. Usually though, the cake is one of the later details on the huge list of things to organise, which means you can draw inspiration from so many places. Here are some of them...

 

Invitations

Your invitations act as a little teaser to your guests for what to expect on the big day. Give your cake designer a copy of your invitation or save the date, and they will be able to draw out colours, themes, flowers, and whether you're going for a contemporary or more traditional style. 

Take a look at these delicate iced biscuit favours I recently designed using a copy of the couples' invitation. Taking the font style and colour, I recreated it using piped royal icing, so that they fit perfectly with their themes.

 

The Dress

I take a lot of inspiration from bridal wear trends, and including details from your wedding dress can add a subtle personal touch. Swatches or photos of the dress can inspire piped lace, beading details, ruffling and more. It doesn't have to be the entire dress in cake form (but if that's what you want, then that's also fine!) but small details can be incorporated into the design. Take this simple white falling petals cake I designed recently - f/w '16 bridal collections incorporated lots of 3D florals and belted skirts, all of which can be beautifully recreated on a cake.

 

Flowers

Flowers are a huge part of a wedding, but they don't have to stop there. Whether it's a cake adorned in hundreds of flowers, or a simple flower on the top, flowers are hugely popular on cakes, and help bring the room together. 

Fresh flowers are a great option (so long as all the flowers are safe to use!). At Caked, I specialise in sugar flowers, so you can have your bouquet recreated in sugar! That means you can keep them after the wedding (maybe not forever, but let's just say I still have my first ever flower posy I made from 5 years ago and they look exactly the same). Sugar flowers are miniature works of art, and the best compliment I can receive is when people don't realise my flowers aren't real. 

Here's a wedding cake I made recently which featured over 300 sugar flowers, all taken from the couples' flowers. After consulting with their florist, I selected to make peonies, roses, delphiniums, blossoms, sweet peas and rose leaves. The cake perfectly matched the huge and colourful flower displays they had throughout the room.

 

Themes

Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, Gatsby, Christmas...themed weddings are so much fun and provide obvious inspiration for the cake. But don't forget other themes, like seasons, colours and locations. 

If you're getting married in Spring or Summer, floral themes are an appropriate choice. If you're opting for an Autumn wedding, maybe autumnal colours, and if it's Winter, maybe blues, silvers and some sparkle. Don't feel you need to be restricted by seasonal themes though. If you're getting married in July go for some sparkle if you want it, and for a Christmas wedding don't feel like you have to have a red and green bauble cake.

Where you're getting married can also offer inspiration. A barn wedding cries out for a rustic cake - naked perhaps, or decorated with delicate flowers - or a beach wedding could be decorated with seashells or exotic flowers. Think about where your cake will be and how it will sit within its surroundings.

Finally colours are something couples tend to decide early on in the wedding planning. This is probably one of the most common details to use when designing the cake. Remember though, less is more, and it's important to keep the design balanced. Recently I was given the brief of blush and gold, so to prevent the cake becoming too blingy, I kept the gold touches to a minimum with a shallow gold leaf tier and gold flecks on the bottom blush tier, and kept the rest of the cake white.  

 

History

It doesn't just have to be about fitting in with everything else on the day. Maybe you have a particular memory that you want featured on the cake, or a detail about the proposal that is especially important to you. You can feature memories on the cake in the form of cake toppers, silhouette designs, or maybe you even want your dog or cat on there!

The bottom line is that your wedding cake is the chance to be truly creative and personal. Whatever you want for your wedding day, whatever is important to you, it's the perfect opportunity to be elegant, wacky, sparkly, colourful, understated, pretty, bold, whatever you want, because it's your personally designed wedding cake.

Are you planning your wedding? Get in touch with Claire at Caked to start designing your perfect bespoke wedding cake, whatever it is you're after!