Wedding Cake Photo

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Long time—think all the way back to ancient Greece and Rome. Historically, wedding cakes typically featured at least two tiers (nowadays it's often more than two), and in many instances, couples were encouraged to kiss over the tiered cake—if they succeeded without knocking it over, it was believed they would live a long and happy life together and be blessed with many children.

While tiered cakes are still popular—with or without the surrounding beliefs around fertility and luck—today’s and grooms are taking things a step further with some over-the-top designs and unique flavors.

Wedding Cake Trends

“Anything goes, ” says Nicky Reinhard (owner of New York City's Nicky Reinhard Events) as she reflects on the time she featured a bride’s cats in the cake.Here, we speak to Reinhard—and many other wedding experts, from wedding planners to pastry chefs—about the one wedding cake they'll never forget. From abundant fresh florals to unexpected cake toppers and even cakes suspended from the ceiling, these confections truly are works of art.

“My clients met in a pastry class where they were asked to prepare Paris-Brest, the famous wheel-shaped French dessert that pays homage to a bicycle race that runs from Paris to Brest, a naval town in Brittany, says Marine Urbain, a wedding consultant at Hotel Manapany and head pastry chef at Sin Garden in St. Barths. They decided to create their own version of the round hazelnut-flavored pastry, one that included a chocolate crispy praline base, caramel puffs, and vanilla whipped cream, which they served at their own wedding. The cake was nine stories tall, with nine representing the month they met (September), their nine years of knowing each other, and the number of tables set at their dinner reception.

Chandelier! exclaims Meg Walker, executive chef at Made by Meg Catering in Southern California. The reception took place in a tent, and the combined weight of the chandelier and cake had to be calculated to ensure the ceiling pole could support both. We took the cake down when it was time to serve, packing away the top layer for the couple to enjoy on their first wedding anniversary.

Wedding Cake Toppers Inspiration

Spring in the nation’s capital is marked by the flowering of the cherry blossom, which symbolizes renewal and optimism, says Allison Jackson, creative director of Pineapple Productions in Washington, D.C. One memorable wedding cake I’ll never forget was created in honor of these blossoms, she recalls, with an exterior featuring blush pink fondant and cherry blossom branches made of sugar strategically placed on the sides of the cake’s five tiers. The separation of the top layers by an illusion spacer made it appear as if the two tiers were floating in the air.

That I won’t soon forget, recalls Leen Nunn, executive pastry chef at the Omni PGA Frisco Resort in Texas. The four-tier cake was covered in fondant, with the second layer made of 24-karat edible gold paper and the third layer made of thin layers of ruffles to match the bride’s dress. The cake is memorable not only because of its beauty but because of how difficult it was to shape the ruffles and find the white peony flowers—in the middle of December—that adorned the cake.

My clients wanted to incorporate the bride’s Mexican heritage when planning their five-tier carrot wedding cake, recalls Elizabeth McKellar, owner of The Nouveau Romantics in Los Angeles and Austin. To emulate papel picado, the traditional Mexican decorative craft, we covered the cake first in metallic gold icing and then hand-drew on details, including the couple’s names and the date of their wedding. We finished by adding plum-colored fondant flowers that cascaded from the top tier.

Nude Wedding Cake Wb08

Our clients loved flowers, so we surrounded their five-tier cake with a stunning floral arrangement that included smilax vine, Italian Ruscus, deep red peonies, burgundy ranunculus, Juliet garden roses, antique hydrangea, burgundy snapdragons, and red amaranth, says Becca Atchison, founding partner and creative director of Rebecca Rose Events in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. A custom crest was hand painted in gold over black fondant and surrounded with 3D sugar flowers. But here’s what made the cake most memorable: instead of positioning it on a table, we suspended it from the beam of a tent!

My clients fell in love with a colorful tapestry, so we decided to use it as inspiration for their four-tier wedding cake, says Heather Anne Leavitt, cake designer and owner of Sweet Heather Anne in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Two circular forms are filled with thousands of colorful, hand-placed sequins representing flowers, leaves, and even an orange moon. I loved how all the sequined colors popped against the matte black icing.

The wedding theme was rainbows, so we dressed my client’s wedding cake in a bright array of orange, blue, purple, and yellow sugar flowers that popped against a white fondant, recalls Nicky Reinhard, owner of Nicky Reinhard Events in New York, of the cake designed by Ron Ben-Israel.But what made this cake unique was the bride’s desire to incorporate her two cats into the design of this five-tier cake—if you look closely, you can see edible versions of the cats resting at the base.

Tier Floral Cake

My most memorable wedding cake took a year to plan and design, says Kelly O'Brien, owner of Glass Slipper Gourmet in Martinez, California. The bride reached out via email, explaining she was having her wedding on the U.S.S. Hornet, a museum aircraft carrier harbored in Alameda, California, to honor her father and fiancé’s military careers. She wanted to create an operational 3D military tank that could shoot out donut holes and marshmallows! The exterior of the cake was covered in edible tracks, antennae, nets, and road wheels, and the inside included a delicious Snickerdoodle filling. The couple's non-traditional cake-cutting ceremony was a target shoot contest—the person with the most points got to do the face smash!

“The cake I’ll never forget reflected my client’s gothic-themed wedding—think skull motifs, a bride in a black leather jacket, tarot cards, and black tapered candles, says Alyce Machcinski, principal cake designer at Zingerman's Bakehouse in Ann Arbor, Michigan. At the bride’s request, the three-tier cake was covered in hand-painted black images, including spiders and caterpillars, which played perfectly into the dark, romantic feel of the wedding.

My client’s Sedona-based wedding had a bohemian theme, so I created this four-tier, ombre-colored cake and incorporated the reddish-brown hues found in nature in Arizona, says Deborah Heyd, a pastry chef at Enchantment Resort in Sedona, Arizona. A macramé design, tassel trimming, gold leaf, and a colorful mix of fresh and dried flowers captured the theme, while a tier separator and a hexagonal-shaped stand resulted in a gravity-defying feel.

Wedding Cake Etiquette: A Baker's Take On What You Need To Know

This four-tier purple cake was most memorable thanks to its color, along with all of the accompanying cascading real flowers, including roses, anemones, and lavender, recalls Kendra Toy, a wedding planner at The Barn on the Pemi in Plymouth, New Hampshire. I loved that the bottom tier had this delicate hand-painted floral scene, and the top tier featured a scripted gold leaf cake topper featuring the couple’s last name.

“This completely edible, out-of-the-box wedding cake featured a fondant-iced ‘lobster’ that sat atop a blue bucket filled with brown sugar ‘sand’, explains David Stark, the chief creative officer of David Stark Design and Production in Brooklyn. [It's] the perfect wedding cake for a couple who got engaged on a beach in Maine. While the cake clearly did not take itself too seriously, its craftsmanship is so extraordinary, it never became kitsch.”

Martine Holzman, the owner of Martine’s Pastries in Lexington, Kentucky, touts a very special pistachio cake as one of her favorites. This five-tier pistachio cake was memorable because each layer featured a different texture, color, and design, she says, including an incredibly unique ombre blue and white marbled honeycomb mosaic surrounding the center layer, a bottom layer made of dried hydrangea leaves, and a top tier displaying vertical gold striping along with a gorgeous floral arrangement of dahlias, dyed asparagus fern, blue hydrangeas, and roses.

Diy Wedding Cake With Marshmallow Fondant

To play into our couple's love of true crime podcasts and a groom who resembled Sherlock Holmes, I incorporateda houndstooth print on the bottom layer of this three-tier cake and draped it in mustard-colored spun sugar, explains Heather Balliet, the owner, lead planner, and designer of Amorology in San Diego. Flowers and pomegranates were placed at the base of the cake for additional texture and color, and as a nod to