Inside a Wedding Cake Tasting & Consultation

Wedding Day Details

During the wedding cake design consultation, I begin with covering the basic information and details about your wedding day. Once I have confirmed that I have your date available, next I’ll I need to know your wedding venue location and a loose wedding day timeline (including your ceremony, reception, and cake cutting times). This helps me determine the delivery window and how long your cake or desserts can safely stay out on display before your cake cutting, without needing to be refrigerated. Finally, an estimated guest count helps me figure out which cake size options or number of desserts would be suitable!

Because the first step of cake consultations may take place early on in wedding planning, your wedding day timeline may not be set in stone yet and you likely won’t have your final guest list yet. This is 100% okay! Delivery time and sizing is something we can update closer to your wedding date.

Your Wedding Vendors List

Once we have the basics down, I love to find out what vendors you have already booked (and enjoy giving knowledgeable recommendations if needed!). Knowing the styles of your other vendors is important to me when conceptualizing your wedding cake design. Additionally, if you want a cake design incorporating fresh flowers, your florist will need to provide cake flowers for me to apply upon delivery. This step ensures that the cake flowers will match your bridal bouquet, table flower arrangements, and other wedding floral installations. Having consistency in the colors, types, and quality of flower is of the utmost importance!

 

Affiliate Disclosure: I may earn a small commission for my endorsement, recommendation, testimonial, and/or link to any products in this blog.

What to Expect During Your Cake Design Consultation

During the wedding cake design consultation, we will talk over which colors, textures, and other details you want to incorporate to customize your wedding cake design. We’ll also go over the best medium and techniques (buttercream, mirror glaze, piping, painting, etc.) for me to use to create your dream wedding cake. We will also go over any non-edible items you have for me to add or will be ordering, like fresh flowers or a cake topper, which I will need to apply upon delivery of your wedding cake on your wedding day.

 

Wedding Cake Design – Share Your Wedding Mood Board

If you have a wedding coordinator, you may already have a mood board. If not, I encourage couples to sit down before their consultation and create a Pinterest board with wedding inspiration, including floral arrangements, table settings, colors, textures, décor that you have in mind, and, of course, wedding cakes! This helps me make your cake dreams come true by keeping us on the same page with ideas. I have a sample gallery of my past wedding cakes and dessert tables for inspiration to pull from as well!

 

Choosing Cake Flavors – Deconstructed Wedding Cake Tasting

Many of my wedding couples say that their most anticipated and favorite part of wedding planning is the wedding cake tasting, as it should be! While some bakeries offer cupcakes and frostings or half-size wedding cake slices to taste, if you plan to do a wedding cake tasting with me, you will see that I prefer to do my tastings deconstructed. The benefit of deconstructed tastings is being able to taste the individual parts that make up a slice of cake (cake, filling, and frosting) separately and being able to mix and match those three parts as you taste. You get to open a box full of fun, custom flavor combinations! Click here for more information on my tasting boxes!

Wedding Dessert Table

If you are interested in a dessert table to go compliment or even replace the wedding cake, we will talk over the types of desserts you would like to serve at your wedding, the range of flavors you have in mind, and logistics of how to best incorporate those into a cohesive wedding dessert table. We will also chat about the best way to break down the number of servings of cake vs. desserts to ensure you have enough to go around and each of guests will get to celebrate with a sweet treat (or three)! During the consultation is a great time to ask any questions you have about food sensitivities, the options I offer to accommodate them, and my process to prevent cross contamination.

Wedding Cake Pricing and Quote

Once we have covered all of the wedding details, guest count, wedding cake and dessert bar options, I can formulate an estimate for you. I price wedding cakes and wedding dessert tables by the serving, based on the cake flavor/design and your dessert table items. Your estimate will include a delivery/set up fee, if applicable, which includes my time to bring the cake to your venue, decorate the dessert table with the items you have provided, apply any non-edible items to the cake, and set out your desserts. From this point, we will move into talking about payments and contracts – the technical side of booking my wedding services.

The main thing to remember when completing a wedding cake tasting and cake design consultation is to enjoy the process, open up, and let me get to know you! Cutting into your wedding cake is one of the first challenges that you will tackle as a couple (tiered cake, four hands, two utensils…good plan, right?). It’s an important moment that I want to make sure is special for you. My greatest wedding cakes and dessert tables have bloomed from the combination of a solid foundation of details, great communication between me and my couples, and working with couples who trust me to take care of them!