Cake design is art and today's wedding cakes are masterpieces
Like the iconic wedding ring, the iconic wedding cake has ancient origins and pride of place in world weddings, and in today’s wedding planner training. Learning about cakes is among the sweetest of wedding coordinator duties. Learning how to become a wedding planner includes fascinating insights into pastry art, as well as how starting a wedding planning business benefits from building relationships with wedding catering and cake design experts. Like the white wedding gown, the white wedding cake is a holdover from the Victorian era. But contemporary wedding cakes have changed with the times. Today, custom cake design is an avant-garde art form with a practical purpose, expressing a couple's lifestyle, engaging their guests' attention, and enhancing the setting of their event. Contemporary wedding cake toppers and wedding cake decorations incorporate exotic flowers, elaborate monograms, and edible, lifelike confections. Elaborately sculpted wedding cakes mimic miniature buildings, vintage automobiles, and astonishing life-size creatures, transforming ballrooms and hotel weddings into wonderlands. Dreaming up these edible works of art takes talent. Producing them is expensive: The average price of today's custom wedding cake exceeds $700. With an original design by a cake design artist, fancy fondant and flowers, monogrammed wedding cake toppers, whimsical wedding cake decorations, and a sculpted groom's cake for the rehearsal dinner, total wedding cake cost stretches the wedding budget bottom line. But it makes planning a wedding a lot of fun!
Unusual Venues and Unique Cakes Make a Sweet Couple, but Take Planning
Ordering the wedding cake is an important part of the wedding timeline, but only once a venue, time, and theme are chosen. The increasing popularity of custom-designed wedding cakes parallels other weddings trends, particularly the preference of creative couples for outdoor wedding venues and non-hotel facilities without in-house catering services. Hotel-made wedding cakes, priced by the slice at $6-$8 or more per guest, are highly profitable, and many hotels charge a cutting fee to discourage the use of an outside bakery or cake designer. For comparison-minded couples, this policy makes commissioning a one-of-a-kind wedding cake for their out-of-the-box wedding venue, such as a bed & breakfast or wine country wedding, affordable and attractive. But an artistic wedding cake delivered by the designer to a distant wedding reception, especially one outdoors, requires extra planning, careful consultation, and precision timing. All cakes are sensitive to heat, and over-the-top wedding cake toppers, fragile wedding cake decorations, and exotic flowers are often applied only after the masterpiece has been placed on the table. For professional wedding planners and creative clients with ideas, knowledge about the art of cake design, the science of cake baking, and the inner workings of the cake business makes the process of commissioning an artful, attention-grabbing wedding cake easy, enjoyable, and worth every moment. What is a wedding planner without a sweet tooth? What's an online wedding planner course without a delectable dessert?
Course Video Tutorial: 'A Celebrity Cake Designer Teaches Wedding Cakes and Cake Design' (36:34)
Marina Sousa, the owner of Just Cake, is a nationally acclaimed California cake design artist. Where have you seen her before? She was selected to create a spectacular cake for the 'Oprah Winfrey Show' and the wedding cake for Keegan Gerhard, the host of 'Food Network Challenge.' A graduate of the California Institute of the Arts and the Culinary Institute of America, she consults with creative couples months before their wedding, sketching designs for the wedding cake of their dreams, supervising baking and decoration in her kitchen, and delivering every cake personally to ensure minimal exposure to heat and perfect placement on the table. Her sophisticated style and star appeal are familiar to viewers of the Food Network, where she has won numerous 'Food Network Challenge' competitions and has served as a judge. Her business savvy, firsthand experience with cake-challenging wedding facilities, and comprehensive knowledge of wedding cakes make her the ideal guide to the wonderful world of contemporary wedding cake design for anyone learning how to become a wedding planner or asking ‘how can I become a wedding planner and still have fun?' In this course video tutorial, Marina teaches Members the fascinating facts of wedding cake history, ingredients, and style; the inside secrets of contemporary cake design; and the showroom-to-backroom operation of a highly successful custom cake-design business.
Learn 12 essential elements of wedding cakes, custom cake design, and the wedding cake business:
- The origins and evolution of the modern wedding cake
- The art and science of cake design and baking
- Grooms' cakes yesterday and today
- When to use sheet cakes, display cakes, and cupcake towers
- Fresh fruits that make tasty wedding cake decorations
- Adding exotic flowers as eye-catching wedding cake toppers
- Varieties of wedding cake flavors, finishes, and mouth-feel
- Cake design ideas from fashion, architecture, and art
- Tasting, sketching, and follow-up after the client consultation
- How a one-of-a-kind wedding cake is designed, decorated, and delivered
- Using special lighting to showcase spectacular wedding cakes in poor locations
- When to order and what to expect to pay for design, production, and deleivey to the venue
