Out of all the wedding planning that has taken place thus far, the cake tasting has been one of my favorite steps! How could you not look forward to tasting cake?– haha! Before we settled on a time and date to meet with the baker we were able to choose from some of their premier flavors and suggest some of our own to be prepared for our tasting. We had the opportunity to spend a few hours eating cake, combining different cake and frosting flavors to make delicious combinations. While creating the perfect bite I kept closing my eyes trying to imagine what it would be like tasting those flavors on my wedding day and I got a little emotional.
Happy tears aside, while the cake tasting is pretty self-explanatory, there’s a little more to it than just indulging your sweet tooth and sipping champagne. Here are a few talking points that are important to discuss with your Baker and cake designer.
Come to your tasting meeting with images or design inspiration. Be sure to keep your Wedding style and aesthetic in mind.
Think about potential flavors. Go into your meeting knowing how many flavors you would like. Also, will those flavors compliment the dinner you served to your guest?
Discuss your budget, and don’t be shy. At the end of this blog post I am sharing a tip that saved my fiancé over $2700!!
Browse the bakers portfolio. This can also assist in bringing about more inspiration and allow you to see more of the baker’s capabilities
What You Should Know Going Into Your Meeting
Before you even get to your cake tasting, you should know your wedding date, venue, approximate guest count, and the time of day your reception will be held. Be sure to give your baker an overview of the wedding logistics for the day. Like, will you need your baker and their team to stay onsite to cut the cake? If your venue or caterer does not offer cake cutting services that will affect your price.
What You Will Talk About
You’ll discuss way more than flavor combos. The Baker will want to learn more about the design of your wedding, wedding color scheme and other decor details. Some key information you will want to have available to share is who your planner, florist/ decor designer and venue are. These pieces of information will help your baker brainstorm ideas and conceptual ie your dream cake! You’ll also discuss how the cake will be presented, whether you have a family heirloom cake topper or cake stand you’d like to use.
What You Will Need to Decide
Thankfully, you don’t have to decide everything about your cake while you’re in a sugar coma but going into the meeting with a game plan you will walk away from your meeting feeling more assured about your decisions. Most importantly take some time to get to know one another. Forming a connection with your vendors will make the process easier and more fun.
Lastly, during your meeting you will be deciding whether or not this is the baker you want to hire, and if the answer is ‘yes,’ you’ll be signing a contract and putting down a deposit to secure them for your date.
Continue Reading Here To See How My Fiancé and I Save Money With Our Wedding Cake!
One popular way to keep those costs down is for us newlyweds to have a multi tiered faux dummy cake on display and have your guest served from a sheet cake of the flavors your chose from the kitchen. Saves time, money and it is so efficient. What is a faux dummy cake you ask? Made of Styrofoam cylinders decorated to look like edible tiers, dummy cakes can provide that jaw dropping visual element of the reception you want and it is perfect for optics without all the baking behind the scenes and cutting in front of your guest. My fiancé and I are choosing to have a small 6 inch wedge on the back of our cake to cut into with a specialty flavor that we chose so that we can still have photos taken of us cutting into our cake. Choosing this option we saved over $2700. Now we are able to allocate those funds into another area of the wedding!!
Another alternative couples choose are to have a faux cake for optics and allow their guest to choose from a buffet of desserts. Often times dessert buffets are cheaper than supplying cake for 100 plus guest.
Hope my point of view and tips help you with you wedding cake planning process! Don’t forget to have fun with it, I know it can be stressful but keep your eye on the positive, seeing the love of your life at the other end of the aisle on your wedding day.
Xo,
Amanda, Bride to Be
