The top tips for a budget wedding cake are:
- Consider a display cake
- Have a presentation cake and a serving cake
- What about a dessert table?
- Use your wedding cake as the dessert course
- Keep it local
- Choose your cake finish carefully
- Wedding cake flowers come in all shapes and prices!
How to get your perfect wedding cake on a budget is something all brides and grooms want to know! There are a few simple tips and tricks you can try to keep the cost of your wedding cake down while still getting a stunning cake for your big day. Think outside the box on how to design and use your wedding cake to make sure you get the best value for money and keep within your wedding cake budget. Now for some great budget wedding cake ideas!
Display wedding cakes
To keep your wedding cake to a budget you could consider having a small cake just for display. Not everyone eats cake and even if they do, they often forget to grab a piece with everything else going on on the big day. It’s absolutely fine to have a wedding cake that has fewer servings than the number of guests. It will still look fantastic and it’s a great way to avoid waste! You can also use the money you’ve saved on size for more decoration on the cake if you like.
Another option for your display wedding cake is to keep it simple and decorate the table around it. Here you’re trading decoration for size, so your cake will go further. If you really want to make sure there’s enough cake to go around, this is a great way to do it. A big part of the cost of a wedding cake is in the decoration, as it takes so much time and effort to make. Decorating the table instead can be far cheaper. Perhaps talk to your florist about an extra special table display, or collect decorative elements yourself.
Another way to keep your wedding cake just for display is to use it to top a dessert tower. Have the smaller cake with more decoration and then set it on top of a display of donuts, cupcakes or even store-bought cakes. Then you don’t have to worry about how many people the wedding cake will feed, as your guests will be tucking into all the tasty treats instead!
Separate presentation cake and serving cake
Another great budget wedding cake idea is to have both a presentation cake and a serving cake. Your presentation cake can be smaller or contain fake cake tiers, brining the cost down. You then have a separate plain cake out the back for people to eat. Nobody will ever know or care that their cake slice wasn’t from the pretty presentation cake. They just care that it’s delicious!
Try a wedding dessert table
Why not scrap the wedding cake all together so you can remove it from your wedding budget entirely? Dessert tables are a great new wedding trend. You can either purchase a beautiful selection of sweet treats yourself, or ask guests to bring homemade bakes and turn your wedding into a bake-off. Have fun with the many options for a wedding dessert table from cupcakes and cake pops to donut walls, macaron towers and personalised biscuits.
Use your wedding cake as dessert
Using your wedding cake as the dessert course means that you can use some of your wedding breakfast budget to get the cake of your dreams. By reducing the cost of the wedding food you’ll have more to spend on your wedding cake. You can also use this method to reduce wedding costs overall.
Try a local wedding cake maker
You can save on delivery costs if you work with a wedding cake maker that’s local to your venue instead of your home. While you may not know as much about cake makers further afield, there are so many great online review tools, from Google to Facebook and Trustpilot, you can still be sure you’ve got a trusted baker. Get on some wedding forums and chat to people local to your venue to get recommendations too. If someone loved their wedding cake they’ll want to rave about the cake maker!
Choosing your cake finish makes all the difference
Naked, buttercream and fondant cake finishes are all different prices. Naked is the lowest price and most budget-friendly for wedding cakes. Buttercream finishes are slightly more and fondant finishes will be the most expensive cake option. You can create very similar designs with all three finishes, so if you’d need to trim a little off the price or want to make your budget stretch to more decorations then consider these options.
Wedding cake flowers come in all shapes and prices!
A big part of the cost of a wedding cake is the flowers (if you’re having them). Handmade sugar flowers are stunning and incredible, but come at a price. They take a lot of skill and an extremely long time to make, so are accordingly expensive. A great budget wedding cake idea is to swap your cake flowers for fresh or artificial flowers in order to keep the costs down. Most fresh flowers are suitable for adding to cakes (just check with your cake maker on exact blooms) and still create a beautiful look. Even artificial silk or foam flowers can be really gorgeous and your cake maker will know where to get the best ones. You can also get fresh flowers from your own wedding florist as part of your package, reducing the cost even further. At Marie Makes we even work directly with your florist to take the hassle out of it for you.
Have a chat with your cake maker
At Marie Makes we love to make wedding cakes for all budgets and know lots of tips and tricks for budget wedding cake ideas. We have loads of experience in creating beautiful wedding cake designs to all budgets and work hard to make your vision come to life no matter how much you want to spend. Get in touch if you’d like to chat about your wedding cake.
« I confirm the subscription of this blog to the Paperblog service under the username mariemakes ».
Hi, I’m Marie and I love to make cakes! I started baking professionally after I was made redundant during lockdown and decided it was time to do what I love for a living. I’ve got many years of experience making cakes for family and friends and can’t wait to make them for you too! I also want to share tips and tricks from all I’ve learned over the years, so I can help you on your baking journey too.
No responses yet