Wedding cake

[mariah123]

I am shocked about the price of cake. 3 tier, £650+ how much did others pay for wedding cake? Thanks, M

3 tier all sponge £300, that was 4 years ago.

Wedding cakes are very expensive, to my mind it's just a showy waste of money.

You'd be better off with a DIY job or getting a friend to do this for you. I've never been to a wedding and heard anyone rave about the taste of the wedding cake.

We ordered ours online from M&S - very affordable, beautifully presented and tasty. I think they do chocolate, vanilla and traditional fruitcake fillings.

We had 3 tier red velvet with white icing and roses, complete with red stones, and white and red ribbon on. It cost about £250 from a cake shop.
Our theme was red and white, and to have the red velvet cake with white buttercream inside was a surprise for the guests (we didn't tell anyone it was red velvet inside).
I don't think they are a showy waste of money, I do think they are an important part of the day.
But the price you've been quoted does seem a lot.

Mine was free but then my sister makes wedding cakes!! It really depends on what you want on the cake rather than the size so much. My sister could and does spend days making the decorations for cakes as the designs just seem to be more elaborate! So the longer it takes, generally the more expensive it is, That does sound quite expensive though. Have you considered a cheese cake?? (Actually cheese not a cheesecake!!)

I second going to supermarkets. I love me some cake, but bakeries mark up the price when something simple and delicious is available at the supermarket for extraordinarily cheaper.

Costco

Kel you have just summed up the madness of weddings😂

In what other world would the colour of the sponge be a secret? (Oh, maybe baby showers)

Thank you so much guys, been looking on M&S such a good price, more like £100-£300 much more affordable. Thanks again x

We had about 10 sponge cakes made by the local Café run by people with learning disabilities. Super affordable and everyone got a massive slice of their favourite sort! They were arranged on logs with woodland creature finger puppet toppers. They were my dh's surprise to me on the day as everything else we planned together. Happy memories!

Waitrose also does weddingy cakes.

A mate of mine paid £500 for her cake, and barely anyone ate it! Her SIL was shoving pieces of it into guests' hands as they left.

My ideal for my own wedding would be a chocolate sponge single tier with a load of cupcakes (some chocolate, some vanilla) and everything covered in buttercream; would make for a nice sweet option on the evening buffet. I've seen this sort of thing go for £250 depending on number of cupcakes.

mariah123 you could always get the M&S Colin and Connie the Caterpillar bride and groom wedding cakes!

We used a local lady who who was just starting out prof ssionally after years of doing friends and familiy's cakes. We first met her when she had a stall at the village fair. Her stuff was beautiful, and we had really wonderful personalised service.
We had a 2 tier sponge with fondant icing. Plain with a draped icing effect (to look like draped fabric). Finished with fresh flowers. £175 in 2014.

lurking that sounds absolutely brilliant. Well done your DH!

How is it mad to keep our cake a surprise? We knew most people expected fruit cake or plain sponge, so decided to not tell anyone our actual cake was also red and white.
What's wrong with that?

Wow. I make wedding cakes and the idea of saying 'that'll be £650' to someone's face is making me cringe. That's insane. The supermarket ones look good but are filled with crap - if you aren't fussed about that then they're a good choice. A freshly baked cake will always taste better (IMO) but you have to pay for the amount of work that someone's put into it. But, that said, £650+ is madness.

We used M&S a mix of fruit and sponge layers and a couple of cutting bars. The cake was really tasty. I highly recommend going with an M&S one.

We had an amazing Waitrose 3-tier chocolate cake, but this was 11 years ago, so it cost £150. Fabulous. Worth every penny! Except the hotel chef just cut it up into huge chunk slices and didn't follow the guide on the box for cutting properly so you get enough slices. So not everyone got a slice as they were cut so big there wasn't enough to go round! I just managed to swipe the last piece and had to share with dh

We made ours because the taste was important to us (also, we had tea and cake including the wedding cake after the ceremony, so people did want to eat it) - we're not master bakers by any stretch of the imagination, but I've rarely found supermarket cakes that are anywhere near as nice, and we didn't want to pay serious money for it. Given our (lack of) skill with icing, and our dislike of fondant icing (too sweet) we went for quirky decoration, with chocolate icing on one part and lemon butter icing on the other. It depends how traditional you want to be.

totally ridiculous to query the price of the cake but then give no description of what it is like. You can apply that thinking to anything! Should jeans never cost more than £20? A car more than 15k?

The decorations might take 2 weeks to make. One thing I do know...that cake maker won't be trousering a fortune of the back of it and her day rate, assuming it is a woman, won't be anything like a day rate for an equivalent trade, mainly dominated by men.

Oh and I don't care what anyone says, m&s wedding cakes look shite in real life. They look nothing like the ones on their website, they might be m&s but they are still full of shite. I'm glad you are happy with your 's, but I'd be pissed off with a squat, lumpy, bumpy pigs ear.

We've got a local supplier - £315 for 3 tiers which seemed very reasonable compared to others. tortebella.co.uk/wedding-cake-price-guide/

Also, if you want the impact of a bigger cake but don't necessarily need loads of cake (because you have fewer guests for instance) you can get fake tiers that the cake people will decorate to look totally real.

Thanks Mummab16 had a look but a bit too far away from me x

Paid over £3,000 sorry that's not even a joke.

I paid £900. Goodness Shanshay, what did you get for that!

I used to make cakes a few years back. The problem is, you are not really paying for the cake, you are paying for the time and the skill of the cake maker. If it's someone who is very skilled and in demand, the price will be higher because well, why should they undervalue their time?
Wedding cakes can easily take days to complete, with many many hours of work, and even on minimum wage that time adds up.
So, yanbu to not want to pay £650 for a cake, you would BU if you tried to get them to do the same cake but cheaper. If you want cheaper, choose a different design or a different cake maker. But bear in mind that they probably won't be as skilled or experienced as the £650 one.

mummab fake tiers don't affect the price very much because the cost isn't in the raw ingredients as much as the time to decorate.

Would love to see a photo of a £3,000 cake! I hope it was delicious