One of the most important details on your wedding day is the cake! I’ve become a cake and cupcake connoisseur over my years as a wedding photographer so trust me when I say I know good cake :). Beyond cake, a lot of weddings nowadays will have a whole dessert table, with a variety of choices like pies, pastries, and chocolate. There are so many ways to go about having dessert at your wedding and I’m going to show you some inspiration for great wedding cakes here in the Fredericksburg, VA area.

Tiered Cake

Most brides like to choose a tiered cake for their wedding cake. It has an elegant look that remains a classic! With tiered cakes, the top layer is usually the part that is frozen for your first anniversary! The second layer is usually given to the bride and groom, and the third layer and beyond is given to guests. The most gorgeous cake I’ve ever seen was a 6 tier cake where the bottom three layers were decorated differently than the top ones!

Cake by BonnBoni

Cake by Fat Girl Cakes

Some brides will opt for a smaller tiered cake and serve the guests from a sheet cake from the same baker. It’s usually more cost-effective to those brides who don’t want to spend a ton of money on a cake and guests typically have no idea.

Theme

The fun part about the cake is that it can match your style and the theme for the entire day! Getting married at a barn? Then something more rustic might be your style like a naked cake! Having a Southern Plantation style wedding? Then you might lean towards something more traditional and classic! Planning a beach elopement? Your dream cake might be covered in gold crabs made from sugar!

There are so many ways to incorporate a theme into your cake to make it truly your own. I even had a couple get engaged at the Leaning Tower of Pisa and their wedding cake was a replica of it!

Cake by Bjiou Sweet Treats

Accents

Along with the theme, you can decide if you would like certain accents on the cake such as ribbons, frills, beads, and more! Your cake maker can give you other ideas too for how to decorate your cake, based on your theme. Many of my brides opt to decorate their cakes with flowers, your florist and baker can coordinate that so the flowers match your bouquet.

Don’t forget to talk to your florist about decorating the cake table with flowers to dress it up even more! If your wedding and reception are in the same location I love reusing your ceremony space decor to create a beautiful backdrop for the cake table!

Cake by Cakes in Art

Toppers

When it comes to wedding cake toppers there are so many more options than just the traditional bride and groom like your parents had! I think initials, monograms, and flowers are very classic and beautiful. I’m also loving the cutout word art I’ve seen recently, things like love and hooray!

Cake by Inn at Willow Grove

For those having an outdoor ceremony, you might want to incorporate nature into your cake in a different way then just flowers. One of my favorite cake toppers were simple crabapples picked from a nearby tree that the groom’s grandfather had planted. Even though he was no longer with them he still felt like a part of their celebration!

If you like the idea of a bride and groom but aren’t looking for traditional you might use a common interest you have like a love of Disney with Mickey and Minnie as the bride and groom! One of my brides loves birds so she had 3 birds on their cake to represent her, her new husband and her son becoming a family.

Different flavors

The best part of wedding planning, in my opinion, is cake tastings! The grooms always tell me that is the part they look forward to most right below catering tasting. Some brides will offer different flavor cakes to appease everyone.

Whether you have a tiered cake or you use sheet cakes for guests, you can ask for different flavors if you would like to add options. This also works well if you are serving cupcakes to your guests instead of cake. Many of my past couples have had 4-5 different cupcake flavors available to guests.

Cake Knife Sets

I like to pass along this advice to my couples after they cut their cake but I think it is such a great tradition I want to share it with all of you too! Buy your own cake knife and server set! It might seem like a waste of money to just cut your wedding cake and then what do you do with it right?

Here is my family tradition I’m passing along to you. My parents used their wedding knife and server set to cut every birthday cake and every anniversary cake when I was growing up! It made every birthday celebration more special when we got to use Mom & Dad’s fancy knife and it’s something David and I now do with our own set.

So invest in a beautiful set that will make you smile every time you bring it out and if you figure you are married for 50 years, plus celebrate at least 100 birthdays between just the two of you then the cost per use becomes mere pennies over the life of your marriage :).

Now onto some wedding cake inspiration! Browse and look at the different cake styles and save the ones you love to show your cake designer!