Opinions on making your own wedding cake....

Have you made celebration cakes before? Do you KNOW you can do it, and do it well? If so - go for it! If not, just pay the money, as it would be very stressful!!

A compromise could be that you buy plain cakes and decorate them yourself?

My sister makes celebration cakes, in fact she is making a friends wedding cake, she finds it really stressful, specially as she also works full time so god knows what she would be like if you threw in planning a wedding also, maybe do a trial run, you can always donate it to the church or homeless shelter or something after just to see if you can do it and how easy you find it, quite a few people seem to get theres from M & S or Waitrose, we have a friend doing ours so it is only costing us £175, if we didnt have this option I would have gone for a M & S one.

I love to bake but decided a wedding cake would be too stressful at the last minute. I've decided on getting the individual layers from M&S and decorating them simply myself - probably just ribbon and some flowers. Cheating even more by having a cake stand rather than havin to stack it myself.

I didn't want to pay £300+ on a cake

If you have a fruit cake you can make it well in advance. My mum is making mine as her present to us. My only concern is the stress for her, but I want something very simple so it shouldn't be too much... cost wise, it is much cheaper!

We were talked out of it, with mum saying how stressful it would be.... We are doing our own flowers though and maybe both might be a bit much..... If I was a better baker, then it might be fine!

It is definitely worth looking at M&S and Waitrose cakes though, as they'll be a lot less than £400. We're actually having an s shaped cake stand so our cake doesn't need to be stacked. If you do do it yourself, that might remove some of the stress! We're getting a cake locally for a wedding some distance away, so we still need to transport it!

My mum and I are making ours. We're fairly competent bakers and we have chosen to do a 3 tier fruit cake so we can make it in advance with quite simple decoration. We are actually doing a trial run with our christmas cake (only 2 tiers) to see if it is possible. I have priced everything out and a 3 tier fruit cake will cost us about £80 to make. The ones I have been looking at to buy are around £500.

My dad suggested I make the wedding cake but instead am going to buy an M&S one and decorate it. I don't think I'd want the hassle of making cakes in the lead up to the wedding!

I made our wedding cake but I opted for fruit cake so I could make it in advance & not be decorating it the day before! I did make & decorate 150 cupcakes & a triple layer sponge cake with fresh fruit the day before though & had to deliver everything the night before as we were getting married in the morning.

I've always wanted to make my own wedding cake & sugarcraft is my hobby so wouldn't have had it any other way but it does take time & as you say it needs to be delivered & set up. Could you bake the cakes & someone else decorate them or vice versa maybe?

Yeah thats an idea! I think the problem is that I only want 1 tier of fruit cake, which I can obviously make in advance, but I want a lemon sponge tier and a chocolate sponge tier as well, which I'd obviously have to make a few days before the wedding! I think someone else mentioned freezing cakes which might be an option. Have never done that though so not sure how well they compare to fresh.

x

My mam made mine. Bottom tier chocolate, middle tier lemon, top tier fruit.

She used a recipe that can be frozen although I'm not sure if she did in the end! I'm pretty sure it was this one but I wanted rustic butter cream icing instead of sugarpaste /recipes/creating-your-wedding-cake

I made my own. 3 tiers fruit + a chocolate cake + a vanilla sponge. Massive overdose of cake, but wasn't sure of numbers and wanted all 3 displayed tiers to be fruit.

Making fruit cakes wasn't too stressful - I used my standard christmas recipe (Nigella) in the sizes recommended by her.

Would recommend using a cake stand (E or S) rather than stacking directly to minimise stress.

I didn't want anything too fancy decorations wise - just 4 icing hearts in the middle of each cake + a ribbon around it. I also had the florist on standby to prepare some extra circular arrangements for the middle of each tier had I made a mess of the icing (I didn't). Cake stand in use pic here (stand now for sale as I'm not getting married again. Floral decoration is just a clematis - my florist was fantastic.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/wedding-cake-stand-/160906426685?pt=UK_HG_Crockery_RL&hash=item2576c5393d

That said I wasn't too fussed about the look of the cake provided it was tasty and not too horrendous - if you're a total perfectionist and would notice any flaw, I wouldn't recommend it as it could be stressful. I also took the view that I can bake an adequate cake, but I am rubbish at make up/hair and flowers and needed decent scaffolding in the dress, so decided to save on cake/favours to add money to the budgets where we had no skills (OH is arty so did the stationery designs!)

Thanks everyone! I'm feeling all motivated about making the cake myself again now!! x

We are making our own, 3 tiers and the cake stand we have has separated tiers.

We are experimenting with the decoration at the moment - using a polysterene cake blank - until we get what we want.

Will then move onto experimenting with cake recipes - planning on bringing them into work for expert opinion! If not we will eat it all ourselves then never get in our outfits!

My mum makes cakes and fruit cakes can be expensive to make with the cost of the fruit etc but generally work out cheaper that shop bought. You can decorate a fresh one a couple of days before but if it goes wrong you have to have a back up plan...