The wedding cake is the one object at the reception that is both decoration and dessert, and the only one everybody photographs before it disappears. It is also where a lot of couples default: three round tiers, white buttercream, a few flowers pushed in at the last minute. There is nothing wrong with that cake. But the best wedding cakes of the last two years have moved somewhere more interesting, towards fabric, sculpture and restraint, and most of it is easier to ask a baker for than it looks.
Eight wedding cake ideas, then, chosen the way we choose everything in The Edit: for how they read in a room and in a photograph, and for whether a good baker in your city could make one. Each comes with the words to use when you brief it. Show the picture, but say the words too. Bakers are designers, and they hear a brief better than a screenshot.
01The draped cake
The dominant wedding cake trend, and for good reason. Fondant rolled thin and draped like silk, so the cake looks dressed rather than decorated. It wants a small cake and a clean surface: two tiers, no flowers, one knot. Put it on a mirrored or stone plinth rather than a cake stand and it becomes an object. Ask for a single drape in matte fondant, and ask to see the baker's previous drapes, because this one is all in the hands.
02The draped cake, at scale
The same idea taken as far as it goes. Five tiers, gathered and swagged like a gown, set in front of curtains that repeat the fold. This is a large-wedding cake, and it is the one instance where the tall tiered cake earns its height, because the drape needs the length to fall. Brief it as gathered rather than draped, and tell the baker what the backdrop is. A cake like this is designed for its wall.
03The sheet cake, done properly
The rectangular wedding cake is the smartest thing to happen to the category. It serves more people for less money, it sits on a table like a centrepiece, and it photographs beautifully from above. This one is a long loaf with vintage lambeth piping on the sides and a solid field of raspberries on top. Ask for a single-tier sheet or loaf with piped garlands, and choose one fruit rather than a mix. The restraint is the design.
04Red anthuriums on white
If the wedding has a colour, put it on the cake once and nowhere else. Three white tiers, one ribbed, with sugar anthuriums in a deep red and a trail of amaranthus falling off the side. It reads as dramatic, and it is the simplest brief on this list: white tiers, one flower in one colour, arranged on a diagonal. The candles around the base are not an accident. Plan the cake table's lighting when you plan the cake.
05The botanical sculpture
The opposite instinct: more, arranged with intent. Rough buttercream, a piped ruffle falling down the front like a seam, and flowers that are half real and half gilded so nobody can tell which. This is a cake for a florist and a baker to build together, so introduce them. Brief the baker on the texture and the ruffle; brief the florist on a palette of green, white and gold with one hanging element. The stems that arch over the top are what make it.
06Pearls and a shell
A coastal wedding cake that does not look like a beach hut. Rectangular again, with pleated wafer paper down the sides and sugar pearls scattered across the top and the board, and one oyster shell holding the last pearl. It is quiet enough to sit on a dinner table rather than a cake table. Ask for pleated or ruffled wafer paper, a scatter of pearls in three sizes, and a single object on top. Then stop.
07The sculpture that happens to be cake
No tiers at all. A long, low form of folded and pleated fondant that looks like a bolt of cloth left on the table, with a few sugar tulips rising out of the folds. It is the most editorial cake here, and the one that needs the most confident baker. Brief it as a single low sculptural form, pleated, with two or three stems. It suits a long dinner table in a room with colour on the walls, where a tall white cake would fight the space.
08The vintage cake with swans
The vintage wedding cake, in the version that works: ribbon swags piped in fondant rather than buttercream, so they hold their line, two swans on top, and a spill of roses and hydrangea around the base instead of on the tiers. The flash photography is part of the look. If your photographer shoots film or direct flash, this is the cake for their pictures. Ask for fondant swags and bows in a single ivory, and keep every flower on the table, not the cake.
One idea per cake. The draped cake has no flowers. The flower cake has no drape. The moment a cake tries to do two of these, it does neither.
How to brief a wedding cake
Before you talk to a baker
Decide the room first
A tall cake in a low-ceilinged room, a white cake against a white wall, a sculptural cake on a plastic stand: the setting decides more than the design does. Know where it will stand and what is behind it.
Serve fewer people than you think
Most guests have had dessert. A display cake for sixty and a kitchen sheet cake for the rest is standard practice among good bakers and cuts the cost by a third or more.
Choose one idea
Drape, or flowers, or sculpture, or pearls. Bring one reference image, not a board. A baker given eight pictures will make an average of them.
Book at six months
The bakers who can do the cakes above are booked the way photographers are. A tasting at six months out, a final design at three.
Ask about the board and the stand
The ugliest part of most wedding cakes is what it sits on. A mirrored plinth, a marble slab or a plain white board changes the whole picture, and it is rarely in the quote unless you ask.
Save the cake you choose to your moodboard alongside the flowers and the table, not on its own. It is a piece of the room, and it should be decided the way the rest of the room is decided: against the same three words, in the same light.
A wedding cake is a decoration that gets eaten. Design it for the hour it stands there, and let it be delicious for the ten minutes after.
— The UNSTAGED Studio
