How to Lower a Wedding Cake Price

How to Control the Cost of Your Wedding Cake

By Sharie Scott, owner Sweet Dreams Bakery, Tucker, Georgia

If you're a bride in this economy, I'm sure you've noticed the numerous articles out now in all the bridal magazines and online about how to reduce the cost of your wedding cake. Frankly, from a professional point of view, these articles are, for the most part, greatly misleading and some of them are downright wrong in their advice. Most of them talk about silly things like making your own wedding cake or having a friend or family member make it for you - a sure route to disaster in my opinion. Making a large wedding cake, icing it, doweling it, stacking it, decorating it and delivering it is a BIG DEAL and should not be attempted by novices.

Or they will advise you to have a small decorated cake surrounded by sheet cakes. Oh, yes, that should look spectacular in your wedding album. Nothing says, "See how cheap I am?" more than sheet cake wedding cakes!

Another option which sounds reasonable is asking the baker to provide decorated dummy cakes to display and have sheet cakes in the kitchen to serve. The problem with this solution is that decorating a cake does not depend on whether or not you have real cake or not. Decorating is decorating and it costs the same to decorate a dummy cake as it does to decorate a real cake. Also, again, sheet cakes… for your wedding guests? Not classy.

Following are some realistic ways you can control the cost of your wedding cake while still getting the show stopper you want:

• Do you really need all those hundreds of little cocktail napkins with your names and reception date on them? They're just going to be used for drinks and such and most of them will end up in the garbage. Providing a good quality, simple ivory or color coordinated plain napkin for a fraction of the cost of printed ones is a much better option. These you can get at any party store or cake decorating store. Money saved: $300. Put this toward the cost of your cake.
  
  
• You can usually rent a riser (a large round or square silver or gold metal platform) for your cake from the venue or hotel, but it will cost you. Most of them charge almost as much to rent them as the darn things cost. A better (and FREE) option is to have the kitchen bring the cake delivery team a couple of those large heavy plastic glass racks they use for washing and storing glasses. These are usually about 20" X 20" square, can be stacked on top of each other and covered with one of the table cloths used elsewhere in the reception room and the cake can be displayed on top of this. It looks great and costs nothing. We use this ploy all the time when we deliver wedding cakes. Money saved: $200. Put this toward the cost of your cake.
  
  
• If the number of servings for your cake is very large, for say 250 or more people, consider having the wedding cake made to serve 200 and a groom's cake made to serve 50. 90% of the time the groom's cake will be priced much lower per slice than the wedding cake and usually the baker will offer a discount on this cake, which is what we do. So your wedding cake which could have cost $1,300 will now cost $1,000 and your groom's cake will cost about $85. Money saved: $215. Put this toward upgrading your wedding cake. More about this later.
  
  
• Please don't ask me to make your wedding cake in 4 different flavors with 4 different fillings for your 4-tier cake! This is something almost all bakers will charge extra for. We simply have to because it is a lot more work and actually costs us more to make a wedding cake this way. Stick with 1 or maybe 2 flavors of cake and 1 or 2 fillings and there will usually not be an extra charge. Extra cost for different flavors/fillings: $250. Put this toward upgrading your cake.

Okay, now let's see how much you saved by forgoing a few little extravagances and going with the more cost effective options:

• Napkins: $300
• Riser: $200
• Groom's cake: $215
• Flavors: $250
• TOTAL SAVED: $965

By simply eliminating some fancy options and cleverly crafting your cake(s), you've saved $965! Your basic buttercream 250-serving wedding cake (200 wedding cake and 50 groom's cake) will cost $1,085 plus tax and delivery. If you upgrade your cake to a fondant covered cake with sugar flowers and a sugar-flower topper and a custom-designed groom's cake, the cost for both will be $1,400 plus tax and delivery. Put your saved $965 toward that and you will pay $435 in actual dollars for a spectacular wedding cake decorated with custom sugar flowers and a fabulous groom's cake of your choice. I'd say that is sound financial advice for controlling the cost of your wedding cake. - Sharie Scott, Sweet Dreams Bakery, Tucker, Georgia