Wowzer - Wedding Cake Costs

I got a giant cupcake and 100 small cupcakes from a local bakery for £215, but they don't deliver. You can save a lot of you're prepared to drop it off yourself!

I'm paying £285 for mine (mate's rates) which is three different flavoured tiers of semi naked sponge and edible gold leaves.

I think the costs mount up when you have them iced, decorated and different flavours etc. Have you tried searching Facebook? I always find that you can get bargains from local suppliers x

Hi!

They are expensive aren't they. ?

I too love cake and decided to go with an M&S one.

I've got my priorities straight and ordered one for £200 that feeds 180 people. We are having 30 guests (i really do love cake!) ?

As someone who makes cake, they're expensive due to the level of skill required.

It's not easy to bake, level, fill, cover, stack and transport a cake. They need to be properly structured, or else they will collapse.

I made a 3 tier in June for a cost price of £90. That did not take into account the time it took me (3 days) or the cost of board and boxes to transport it. I also saved a LOT of money by having a reasonable amount of flour and sugar in the house already.

Not to mention the fact that Weddings are the most important day of most women's lives. Do you want to look back on your wedding photos and see a wobbly, cracked cake that looks pants? No, probably not. Most people fall in love with the Pinterest cakes but won't spend the money on the skill to achieve that.

I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with M&S cakes (there isn't) but you have to look at the big picture. I was going to make my own, but logistically it didn't make sense.

Sorry for the little rant, I don't mean to upset anyone! I just know what goes in to a Wedding cake and the pressure of making it perfect. If you still don't believe me though, check out cake wrecks

x

We're looking at spending £350 ish for a 3 tier cake iced in a geometric design. I have a few friends who make cakes and they always say; good cake isn't cheap and cheap cake isn't good. It depends what you're after, we want a cake decorated in a certain way so can't go with M&S but if you don't have a specific decoration in mind I'm sure they're great. We're thinking of getting a pork pie one from there

x

Doesn't read like a rant to me Stephi, and I couldn't agree more! I'm a (very) amateur baker and used to often get asked to make cakes for friends birthdays/ cake sales/ school fetes etc- I've stopped doing them now because no one has ANY idea of the time and cost involved and certainly aren't prepared to contribute, let alone pay!

One example.....'Can you just knock up a couple of dozen intricately iced cup cakes and a couple of fully iced chocolate cakes, oh, and say, umm, four victoria sponges for us for our fete in two days?'..... err, yes, if you're prepared to pay for my time, all the ingredients and are going to come and clean my kitchen to 'commercial' standard....!!

I work as a nurse... if I worked a 10 hour night shift, I'd take home about £150 after tax.... it would take me AT LEAST 20 hours to make the above mentioned cakes, cool them, level, ice and decorate them- so I'd need to charge at least £250 plus the cost of the ingredients to do them to make it worth my while- if anyone was prepared to actually pay that much for a few 'knocked up' cakes, I'd quit nursing tomorrow! ?

I was absolutely delighted with the quote I got for our cake- a three tier (one fruit, one victoria sponge, one chocolate) very intricately iced 'surprise reveal' cake (traditional 'wedding cake' front with a 'cartoon' insert on the back!) made by a very reputable local lady- £465 including delivery.... I don't have a problem paying that at all!

I'm making my own and it's cost £200 already!

We looked for ours and a cake maker came highly recommended by some family members - but their prices were from £350! Just for a simple two tier wedding cake - that would have fed a lot more people than we have actually invited!

So, we used some of that money (as it was kindly gifted to us as a present) to pay for hot bacon sandwiches on the evening, and have then bought 4 very nice cakes from M&S to go on our specially made cake stand - it's only cost £66 and most people will get a second slice!

Usually a bespoke cake is also transported, delivered and setup at the venue too which is usually a three hour process not including the fuel involved in doing so.

That's one of the downsides to mass produced cakes like M&S offer.

I wouldn't of said on balance wedding cakes were expensive, that suggests they're over priced for what they are.

I think we paid about £400 for ours and it wasn't a massive one like some I've seen.

I have read the cake makers replies and im not wanting to take anything away from you as I understand how hard it is to bake cakes (I would do my own apart from Im not the good at fruit cake and thats what I want). Im also aware that quaility ingrdients cost more and part time cake makers dont have the discounts available to them like big enterprise due to the lack of purchasing power. It always costs me more to bake a cake than to buy one but I love doing it

I understand that the fancy cakes like castles, or cascading flowers, petals etc will cost more, but I was only looking at the simple plain two tier round cake that feeds 50-60 people as I have a topper in mind already and have plenty of ribbon to put around the bottom of the cake myself so thats why I thought £150 - £200 was a resonable price to expect.

It is interesting to see everyones views on it from both sides of the fence though and I look forward to other comments.

On the one hand, I agree that that shouldn't be as expensive as you've been quoted. That should only be an 8" and 6" (or 10" & 8" if you want bigger slices) for 60 people. I do know some cake makers who hate doing plain white ones though as they have to be PERFECT.

Where in the country are you? I might be able to recommend some people

x

Im Coventry, but the Warwiskshire side, so can easily hop over the border to places like Nuneaton etc.

I'm in the West Midlands - my cake lady is called the Little Cake Company and she's based in Sheldon.

She's very reasonably priced:

http://www.littlecakecompany.co.uk/price-guide/4586927299

Otherwise, these guys are based in Solihull:

http://www.thecakeartists.com/weddingcakes.htm

They are also very yummy - they made my Engagement cake

xx

I was also shocked at the price of my cake for a moment when I first went for a consultation but we have saved a lot of money on our wedding so I thought we deserved a really nice cake. It will feed approx 140 people and will be very similar to the cake below but instead of alice etc on the top hat it will be the little bobble head figures. It will be chocolate on the bottom, toffee in the middle and white chocolate and raspberry on the top. The total fee was £625 which includes delivery and a rustic stand.

FIL2B is making our wedding cake - I've never seen a single cake he's baked previously, but he works in catering & was in catering for the RAF for his whole career & has cooked for the queen no less! So I'm going to trust he'll do me a good job!

But yes, it's a shock at first when you speak to cake makers but the skill & time they take is incredible isn't it, I take my hat off to anyone who can create a good cake!

We did speak to a lady at a wedding fair who said she could make a very basic 3 tier for £180 as originally my boss' wife was going to hand paint flowers on to it, but I think she's well out of your area unfortunately!

I was shocked at the price as well. We were quoted £400 for 3 tier some decoration. So I decided to make my own. In hindsight this was rather stressful and I probably should have just paid the £400!

That's the thing, how much do you value your time and what if it goes wrong, do you start over and waste more time & money or then go with a pro. A bit like photographers except you cant go back and get the photos of your wedding done again if you chose an inexperience photographer and they messed up the photos.

We have avoided the whole issue of an expensive cake by asking our guests to participate in a Great Wedding Bake Off. Plenty of our guests are bringing a homemade cake, we will judge them and award a prize to the winner.

We've also ordered a single tier naked cake as our cutting cake - a fledgling local cake company is doing this for us for £36.

Wow that Alice in Wonderland cake is amazing!