Wedding cake assistance please ;)

[5babyangels]

Wedding without spending and making my own cake! Competent cake maker, but never tackled a wedding cake. Don't want cup cake route. Fruit, sponge or chocolate or a tier of each? Suggestions gratefully received!

We had a layer of each, fruit, sponge and chocolate for ours, which we served as dessert with a fruit coulis to keep costs down. My friend made it for us.
We bought a 3 tiered cake stand for displaying it and used simple icing and dolly mixtures to decorate it.
It worked really well and everyone was very impressed!

We got 2 different sized M&S cakes (one fruit, one sponge) and a 2 tiered cake stand from eBay, wasn't expensive, and then just decorated using bits from the table decorations which we'd made ourselves.

Fruit cake all the way as I love it - and it can be done ahead of time where as sponge has to be done at the last min. Mary Berry's celebration / Christmas cake recipe is great and really easy - it's what I used for my wedding cake.

Fab ideas everyone! However I bought m&s last time I got married! so this time would like to make my own. Any idea about icing and decorations! I Know a great cake shop I can hire a stand from

Sorry thought you meant without spending and without making your own....spot the idiot who needs an early night

That's ok bumble! If I hadn't done it last time I probably would have gone down that route!

have a look www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/4577/wedding-cake-rich-dark-chocolate-cake There are links to the other ones.

Have a look at these for inspiration:
www.maisiefantaisie.co.uk/wedding-cakes.html

www.peggyporschen.com/tiered-cakes.html

Trends for cakes are not for stands.

Thankyou bacon, will do !

Possibly helpful YouTube video...

I would make and freeze sponge cake well in advance. This allows for any disasters plus takes away the stress. Cutting a semi froze cake is very easy too. A sponge cake is prob better for using the cake as a pudding as you would serve berries and cream.

Yes, love U-Tube gets lots of help. Beleive me its not that difficult to do. and mistake, bumps and be covered with daisies or shapes. Cutters are very easy. Shapes etc can be made well in advance and kept in an box thats not airtight. You could incoprate this into a hen do???

Lots of quality ribbon and those nice diamonte broches make life easy and you can see on these top designers cakes this is what they do.

Yes was wondering about sponge and freezing as dh not keen on fruit cake! With all these top tips surely it will be ok and if not I supper butter icing covers a multitude if sins!

the rich dark chocolate cake on bbc good food (link in bacons post) & also their easy vanilla cake are really good & if you get them iced with fondant sealed to cake boards they will actually last a good five days so you can make them a little bit in advance

Most cake bakers work on the principal 1 week decorate, 1 week eat.

Yes, sealing them with the fondant or chocolate will keep moist.

Just an idea that you may have already thought of but the actual cake you display does not have to be big enough to feed everyone, you can have the same type of cake ready cut and just a cake for show IYSWIM??