Wedding cake drama

Is your MIL not confident with any form of icing or is it just the fancy bits (lettering, patterns, sugar paste flowers etc) that she wouldn't feel confident with?

I had a friend who offered to bake a cake for us. She was happy to cover it with plain white icing, but said we would have to get someone else to do any decoration. So we decided to leave the cake plain and buy a custom cake topper as our decoration. We chose a black silhoutte decoration and it looked really striking against the plain white icing - we've used it since for our anniversary cake and plan on using it every year.

You could also look at getting a custom ribbon for wrapping round the cake if you wanted to dress it up more. I think you'll struggle to get a professional to decorate a cake made by someone else for health & safety reasons/liability reasons.

This is the company which did our cake topper - you can get all kinds of different outlines so you can pick a bride/groom as close as possible to yourselves and you can include children, pets etc. They were really helpful in customising ours. https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/724564163/mini-goldendoodle-silhouette-wedding?click_key=ff7335d7d3738267e311b5cc2c6561e15e3a48c6%3A724564163&click_sum=4fed6978&ga_order=most_relevant&ga_search_type=all&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_search_query=tilly+bean+bespoke&ref=sr_gallery-1-22&organic_search_click=1

And this is just one example of wedding cake ribbon - loads out there https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/760529182/personalised-wedding-ribbon-wedding?click_key=c54a6f842a3100fcf551eb5870aa70c40573c920%3A760529182&click_sum=0bce61c8&ga_order=most_relevant&ga_search_type=all&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_search_query=wedding+cake+ribbon&ref=sr_gallery-1-20&organic_search_click=1

Or you could buy ready made floral decorations and add them to the cake yourself https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/1102484649/wedding-cake-topper-white-ivory-cake?ga_order=most_relevant&ga_search_type=all&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_search_query=wedding+cake+flowers&ref=sc_gallery-1-1&pro=1&frs=1&listing_id=1102484649&listing_slug=wedding-cake-topper-white-ivory-cake&plkey=605e861d8ba57a4870c27060cc35d2f561eec47e%3A1102484649

Hi thanks for the advice. The cake design i had in mind is decorated in buttercream. The original idea was my ML would bake the cake then my cousin who is a cake baker (but who lives 200 miles from me) was going to do the decorating. So i thought i had it all worked out until two weeks ago when my cousin tell me i should probably find someone local as she's concerned the decorating preparation would need to be started a few days before she will arrive. She has offered to do the smooth icing as that could be done a couple of days before the wedding....its annoying because i had the idea in my head how i wanted the cake to look. My ML could do basic icing, but she usually just bakes for family and close friends, because its for our wedding she not confident for that and i wouldn't want her to feel pressured. I've not been able to find anyone so far for the exact reasons you mentioned.

Thank you, I never hadn't thought of that, I'll give Facebook a go.