Wedding Cakes Inspired by Nature

One of the most special parts of any wedding reception is the cake. Always a showpiece, your cake is the perfect opportunity to express something about yourself or your wedding theme. What could be more lovely for a cake than decorations which mimic the beauty of the great outdoors? These are some wonderful ideas for gorgeous wedding cakes inspired by nature.

Cascades of flowers, either fresh or sugar, are gorgeous when you want to create a more natural design for your wedding cake. The blossoms can be dainty and simple, such as pink rosebuds, or dramatic and elegant, as in handcrafted sugar orchids. Very colorful blossoms are a fantastic way to bring some bright color into your wedding reception in a way that is “safe”. Think multi-colored cascades of pinks, purples, and fuchsias or a sophisticated palette of greens and browns. This is a wonderful way to brighten up your reception while getting your inspiration from nature.

Butterflies are a gorgeous idea for a wedding cake decoration. Their fluttery grace and inherent beauty make them the ideal accent for a bridal cake. You can opt for an understated design with a few yellow butterflies perched daintily on each tier, or go wild with an over-the-top flurry of butterflies in every hue of the rainbow covering the cake. Take your color palette from the rest of your wedding, everything from the flowers to the tablecloths to special handmade wedding jewelry can inform the hues you choose for your butterfly cake. This design works equally well for a wedding with a butterfly theme or one with a special color palette but no particular signature motif.

Forests and trees can also be a wonderful place to get inspired for your wedding cake. Deeper colors in a natural palette work best. This is a good motif for an earthy wedding where the bride wears a non-traditional gown and unique handmade wedding jewelry. A deep rich chocolate cake dragged with a utensil to create a “tree bark” effect would be marvelous for a woodland reception. You can decorate it with fresh flowers in deep colors like purple, or whimsical decorations such as marzipan mushrooms and even tiny fairies. A different approach to a forest inspired cake would be to have the baker handpaint a graceful tree growing up the tiers of the cake. This is an elegant take on the woodsy theme.

Delicious and Gorgeous Chocolate Wedding Cakes

Everyone loves chocolate! Instead of the traditional white wedding cake, it can be really great to choose a rich, yummy chocolate cake instead. These days, you don’t have to hide a flavored cake under plain white icing, either; not only can you have a chocolate cake, but go ahead and frost it with chocolate icing, too. These are some fantastic ideas for delicious and gorgeous chocolate wedding cakes.

A chocolate wedding cake can be the perfect centerpiece for a grand wedding reception. Let’s say you were planning an opulent reception in an ornate ballroom in a luxury hotel. Begin by designing a cake which is very tall; five or more tiers would be good – you want your wedding cake to make a statement. Place it upon a silver cake stand and decorate it with fresh red roses between each tier. Top the cake with a small antique silver vase filled with red roses. Then decorate the sides of each tiers with a hand applied scroll pattern in crystals. The sparkling detail will really pop against the dark chocolate frosting, and is a fabulous complement to the bride’s Swarovski crystal bracelets, earrings, and bridal necklace.

There are some great modern cake designs which can be created for a chocolate wedding cake. Take three narrow layers and stack high before covering with a smooth-as-glass brown fondant. Adorn each tier of the wedding cake with circles in varying sizes done in white, lime green, and tangerine for a mod cake that will steal the show at the reception. Or opt for a modern elegant cake and decorate a fondant covered chocolate cake with an all-over damask motif in a contrasting color like sky blue. So sophisticated and definitely delicious.

Chocolate works great for a country wedding cake. A low cake with two or three wide tiers would look wonderful decorated with fresh strawberries for a summer reception. Another gorgeous idea is to decorate the cake with chocolate cosmos and pink wax flowers. Whichever decorations you choose, your guests are sure to love the sweet ending to your wedding reception!

2010 Wedding Cake Trends

Do you know what the most stylish wedding cakes will look like this year? Are cupcakes still in? Is fondant still king? Here is everything you need to know about 2010 wedding cake trends.

A new simplicity is ruling the bakeries this year. Overly ornate and precious cakes are taking a backseat to those which are simple, elegant, and above all, delicious. After seasons as the hot wedding trend, brides are finally cooling towards cupcakes, and instead opting for a real wedding cake, usually with three tiers. Very elaborate frosting made to mimic the wedding gown and bridal jewelry is less popular than frosting which looks like…well, frosting.

No longer reserved for the groom’s cake, rich dark chocolate has made its way to center stage on the main wedding cake. It is being used in elegant cake designs which feature architectural detailing, fresh flower accents, and a swanky use of ribbons.  Chocolate cakes are one wedding trend which your guests are guaranteed to love!

Streamlined geometric wedding cakes are also in style for 2010. A three or four tier cake with square layers will look chic this year. Motifs with clean lines suit this modern cake design, as do bands of horizontal stripes. Emphasize a minimalist chic by keeping the cake itself pure white. Festive touches of color in the motif will keep the cake from looking too plain. Symmetry is also in, by the way, so stack those square tiers with the same orientation; none of that topsy-turvy stuff that was popular a couple of years ago. The Dr. Suess look is definitely out this year.

They say that three is a magic number, and that is true for wedding cakes in 2010. A pretty way to make a statement with a simple cake is by making it in multiple. Make one medium sized cake with several tiers as the centerpiece, and then flank it with two matching mini-cakes, one on each side. This is a great idea for brides who want to keep the design of their cakes clean and modern, yet want to have a cake display with some “oomph”.

Modern Mixed Pattern Wedding Cakes

One of the hippest new trends right now is modern mixed pattern wedding cakes. The mixed pattern wedding cake is a simple enough concept. Rather than having each tier of the cake look the same, couples are opting to do a different design on each layer. The result is fresh, fun, and funky. It looks absolutely contemporary, yet can be used with very retro or classic patterns. The best part of a mixed pattern cake is sitting down with your baker to decide which designs you would like to combine.

A wedding cake with a few different patterns on the tiers will allow you to put your own personal stamp on your reception, much like custom bridal jewelry does for your wedding attire.  In fact, the bride’s attire can be a great inspiration for the cake design. If you were wearing a lace gown, the top and bottom cake tiers could be decorated with a fondant “lace” design to match your dress, and the middle layer could be a crisp stripe design.

Mixed pattern wedding cakes can also draw their inspiration from the wedding colors. Let’s say that you were having a wedding based on one of this year’s hottest colors, turquoise.  If you want to make your cake elegant, choose a turquoise and cherry red damask design mixed with medium width stripes. Or go with a summer tropical flavor, and make one tier a turquoise and fuchsia hibiscus print, one with lime and turquoise surfboards, and a third tier with a turquoise and white graphic wave pattern. The three designs are all funky and unique, yet will still have a nice flow based on one shared color and a common theme.

Preppy gals have long adored combining different patterns in similar color palettes, so a mixed pattern cake is a natural for the preppy bride. Picture a cake created all in pink and green. You can have an argyle tier, a striped tier, and a polka dot tier. Or have one of your favorite Lilly Pulitzer designs used as inspiration for the largest tier, and accent it with a striped middle layer, and a monogrammed top tier. Sheer bliss!

The mixed pattern cake trend is so much fun that it is destined to become a big hit. The possibilities for creativity and personal expression are truly limitless. Why not get in on the fun and design a mixed pattern cake for your wedding this year?

Winter Wedding Cake Ideas

A great way to make your wedding extra special is with a gorgeous wedding cake. The cake is much more than a dessert, it is one of the key decorative elements at the reception. These are some fantastic ideas for winter wedding cakes.

Snowflakes are one of the loveliest motifs for winter weddings. They can be used in everything from your crystal wedding jewelry to the invitations to favors. Snowflakes also look great on a wedding cake. This motif works beautifully in an icy color like white, pale blue, or silver. A simple fondant cake with ice blue frosting can be decorated with piped snowflakes in white or silver, scattered around the tiers like falling snow. Mix up the sizes and designs of the snowflakes for the best effect.
Speaking of the Winter Wonderland idea, you can use it as a terrific point of inspiration for a wedding cake. An all white cake is always a classic; for a formal winter wedding, it can be personalized with a heavy dusting of a shimmer powder to give it glitz and glamor. A wide silver satin ribbon can be wrapped around the base of each tier, then top it all off with a crystal monogram cake topper. The effect is elegant and modern, yet festive and not at all plain. This style of cake is gorgeous with crystal wedding jewelry, especially when done with the crystal cake topper.

If you are looking for something truly unique, ask your baker to design a winter scene on your wedding cake. Think about how incredible it would be to have a handpainted scene of horse drawn sleighs in snowy meadows or ice skaters circling each tier of your cake. You can personalize this one of a kind cake even more by representing scenes of your favorite winter activities, whether they are skating, snowshoeing, or even ice fishing. Your wedding cake will be such a work of art that it will be hard to cut into i

There are just as many wonderful ideas for winter wedding cakes as there are for the more common summer cakes. It is simply a matter of using your creativity and featuring a theme that highlights something unique to winter. The resulting winter wedding cake will be so special that it will be almost too good to eat.

How to Order a Wedding Cake

One of the most special parts of a wedding reception is the cake. Often the centerpiece of the reception, you want your wedding cake to have great style, taste good, and fit in with your budget. Yet many brides go into the process having no idea of the basics of wedding cakes. Here is how to order the wedding cake of your dreams.

There are two things that you absolutely must know before ordering your wedding cake. The first is the number of guests that you will have and the second is your budget. The price of a wedding cake can range wildly, anywhere from a few hundred to several thousand, so this is why it is important to have a firm budget in mind before meeting with bakers. You don’t want to fall in love with one of their designs only to find that it is ten times the price that you are able to afford!

The look of your wedding cake should suit the rest of your wedding. For instance, if you are having a traditional wedding, wearing a classic gown and pearl bridal jewelry, you should also have a traditional cake, such as an all white buttercream. The accents can also tie in with your bridal attire; tiny frosting “pearls” can be used to create a delicate border on the edge of the tiers to mimic your pearl bridal jewelry, or you can have the baker replicate the pattern of the lace on your gown in fondant.

Your budget will have a big impact on the shape, size, and decorations on your wedding cake. The ones that you see in the magazines that are five tiers tall and covered with a profusion of handmade frosting orchids cost thousands of dollars, which is not what the average bride will spend for her dessert. However, don’t shy away from showing your baker designs that appeal to you, no matter how fantastical they may be. If you loved the grand orchid cake but found it too pricey, a similar confection could be created using fresh flowers on a three tier cake. A tried and true trick for saving money is to have a smallish display cake made to put out at the reception, but to also have the same flavor made in an inexpensive sheet cake to cut in the kitchen and have the waitstaff serve to guests. No one will be the wiser, and you will get to “have your cake and eat it too”.

Grooms’ Favorite Wedding Ideas

Everyone knows that weddings are really the bride’s purview. Yet these days, grooms are more involved than ever in the wedding planning process, and many of them are bringing their own ideas into play. Here are some of the favorite ideas that grooms have contributed to their weddings.

If you ask any groom what part of the wedding concerns him the most, he is likely to say the food. One trend that grooms can really get behind is serving comfort food, especially for the cocktail hour. Pigs in blankets on silver platters, sleeves of crispy fresh “pommes frites” (french fries), milkshake shots and mac and cheese cups are all high on the list of things that grooms really love to see on their menu. Serve these foods, and you can bet that your guests will love them as well.

Another idea that grooms really go for is the groom’s cake. These cakes are custom made by specialty bakers in a design that represents an interest of the groom’s. It could be a cake shaped like his dog, or sculpted to look like his favorite car, or even the helmet of his favorite NFL team. The point is that the groom’s cake is one part of the wedding that is all about him, even in the most formal and traditional white wedding. Best of all, the groom’s cake is traditionally chocolate.

Something else that grooms love is to have some sort of activity at the wedding reception, beyond dancing and eating. Casino nights have become a popular form of entertainment at some weddings. It can be done in a very hip sort of way (although not every bride is going to go for this idea, no matter how well it is executed). This can tie in well with groomsmen gifts that have a poker theme. The nice thing about those types of groomsmen gifts is that they are a signal to the groom’s buddies that he still intends to hang with them on poker night after he is married.

The more the groom becomes involved with planning his wedding, the better. It will give him a chance to be a part of the festivities, and it also gives the bride a fresh take on what a wedding should be like. When the bride and groom plan their wedding together, the day will feel even more special to both of them.

Wedding Decorations Inspired by Bridal Gowns

The bridal gown is one of the favorite parts of the wedding for most brides. If you ask brides what they loved most about their weddings (other than the groom!), most will say their wedding dresses and their bridal jewelry sets. Since it is such a special part of the wedding day, it can be really fun to design some wedding decorations that are inspired by the details on your bridal gown. These are some suggestions to get you started.

If you have chosen a bridal gown with special beading, you will surely want to use that as the inspiration for the décor at your wedding. A sweet dresses with seed pearl embellishments worn traditional pearl bridal jewelry sets would lend themselves to one style; if the beading on your gown is done in dazzling Swarovski crystals, you would go another direction entirely for your décor. This is what allows you to really personalize your wedding.

With the sweet gown as your inspiration, think about a white-on-white color scheme featuring lots of tiny pearls. For example, an all white bouquet of peonies and garden roses would look beautiful when tied with a wide white ribbon bow. Trim the edges of the ribbon with a row of tiny stitched pearls. You can even use seed pearls to create subtle monograms on everything from white linen banners to hang on the church doors to a custom chair cover on the bride’s seat at the reception. For the wedding cake, a white buttercream frosting with faux frosting “pearls” would be ideal.

If it is sparkle that made you fall in love with your wedding gown, bring that bling into your wedding design. Go crazy with crystals! Adorn the reception venue with opulent crystal chandeliers, hang teardrop crystals in the centerpieces, and even slip a few twinkling Swarovski crystals onto the ribbons on the wedding favors. As long as all of the crystals you use are top quality, the effect will be elegant and extraordinary, but never tacky. It is a great way to create a unified décor scheme that will tie your whole wedding together beautifully, while highlighting the special features of your wedding gown.

Wedding Things That I am Over!

If you look at enough pictures of weddings, after a while, you start to see the same things done in the same way over and over again. Sometimes these are ideas that started out as fresh trends only to become so popular that they have lost their unique appeal. In other instances, brides might be doing something in the established way, and it just feels too dated and overdone. This is a list of wedding things that I am over; read along and see if you agree!

Strapless Dresses. Yes I know that they are very flattering and that they also account for 3/4s of the available gown choices these days. And yet it seems like for the last however many years, every bride you see is wearing some variation of a strapless gown. Enough already! The freshest new looks are the one shoulder gowns, often with unique and special couture styling that give them a daring yet elegant appeal. If asymmetry is not your thing, there are also some lovely new gowns with wide set straps that flow into plunging deep v-necks, which is incredibly flattering on most women.

Too Much Jewelry or Not Enough. This may seem like a contradiction, but it seems like many brides have trouble finding that perfect happy medium when it comes to their accessories. You either see brides who are trying to make a minimalist and ultra-modern statement by omitting any ornamentation or brides who pile on so much jewelry that they end up looking like soap opera stars. Neither extreme is good! On the one hand, your wedding is not the time to dress down, so a subtle piece or two of crystal bridal jewelry makes a nice addition to a very simple gown. On the other hand, a very big rhinestone necklace paired with a bold tiara is just way too much. You should pick one stand out accessory, and pair it with a good supporting cast.

Choreographed First Dances. Taking dance lessons so that you don’t feel foolish taking a spin around the dance floor during your spotlight dance is a wonderful idea. Hiring a choreographer and involving an entire cast of “extras”  is just plain tacky. Your guests come to your wedding to join you in celebrating your marriage, not to see a Broadway show. Can we please have a return to the days where the newlyweds did an awkward but honest shuffle around the dance floor to “At Last” or “Unforgettable” and then the floor was opened up to others? Please?

Overly Clever Wedding Cakes. The trend in recent years has been for wedding cakes that are more and more unusual and eye-popping. Neon colors, tilted tiers, lights, sparkles, and cakes costing many, many thousands of dollars have become the norm. There comes a point, however, when you can just get too clever in trying to make your cake unique and it loses the idea of simple beauty that has guided brides for generations. I think that we have reached a tipping point on the trendy cakes, and that it is time for a return to the classics. After several years of over-the-top cake design, more simple desserts will feel like a breath of fresh air.

Wedding Cake Trends for 2009

The wedding cake is truly the showpiece of the reception. Cakes have become more creative, and also follow trends in design and fashion like never before. These are some of the hottest trends for wedding cakes in 2009.

Clean lines are king right now. The smooth-as-glass finish of fondant icing is still all the rage at most weddings, and one stand-out design feature is more popular than a busy cake with a pattern all over it. One interesting trend in wedding cakes has to do with the layers. The basic look of three stacked round layers is still the most common, but you are also seeing a lot more of cakes that are square, octagonal, hexagonal, or a combination of round and shaped layers. Offset layers, which are stacked slightly off-kilter are also a hot look for wedding cakes right now.

Mod design is also something that is being seen in wedding cakes these days. Round circles layered over fondant is one cool effect. Simplistic sugar flowers are another big trend. They are often scattered over the cake in varying density, such as many flowers clustered near the top of the cake, gradually thinning out to just a few blossoms scattered at the base of the cake.

Brides are still interested in having cakes designed that complement their bridal ensemble in some way. For a very unique look, cover a cake in large white sugar “pearls” which are dusted with an opalescent powder. This is a fun and modern reference to classic pearl bridal jewelry. If crystal bridal jewelry is more your style, you can adorn your cake with clear molded sugar “crystals” arranged in a geometric design. Note that the sugar crystals are intended to mimic clear crystals, not silvery rhinestones. It is a more subtle style than the ornate cake jewelry that has been seen in recent years.

The great thing about a wedding cake is that you can have whatever you want. So, take some pointers from the latest trends, or choose to go in another direction; the choice is entirely yours. In the end, all that matters is that you love the way your wedding cake looks, and that your guests love how it tastes.