Wedding Cake Tiers, Sizes and Servings: All You Need to Know
Make the task of choosing the size, servings, and number of tiers a wedding cake has a lot easier with our guide.
Whether you dream of decorating your own one-tier wonder, or you dream of a towering masterpiece of a wedding cake created for your wedding reception, it’s important to know about tiers, sizes, and servings.
Ordering a wedding cake can be a bit of a puzzle, especially because determining the right size for your guests can really depend on a number of different factors. While budget is a massive consideration, it’s important to also think about the other desserts that will be served during the reception. Plus, how the size of your wedding cake will impact its aesthetics, and how significant the wedding cake is on your priority list.
Above all, your wedding cake should reflect you and your partner, i.e. have the flavours you love, a look you like, and show your personalities (a unique cake topper is a great way to do this!) But it's also important not to overthink it – the process of choosing your wedding cake should be fun! That is why we talked to our wedding cake experts at Cakes by Carina and LuxeCakes & Artisan Bakes to provide you with all the useful info. Leaving you free to go wild with cake decoration.
A Guide to Wedding Cake Tiers, Sizes, and Servings
Here’s everything you need to know about wedding cake tiers, sizes and servings.
What is the History Behind Wedding Cake Tiers?
The art of serving a wedding cake in tiers originated as part of a medieval tradition whereby individual cakes were stacked up as high as possible, and the bride and groom were invited to kiss over the top of it.
A successful kiss, without any cakes tumbling down, would mean a happy marriage for the couple.
How Many Tiers Does a Traditional Wedding Cake Have?
Traditionally, a wedding cake would have three tiers, with each tier of it having its own significance. The bottom tier would be for eating at the ceremony, the middle tier would be for distributing to guests after the event, and the top tier was saved.
The traditional recipe for a wedding cake was a fruit cake, which has a long shelf life, and is quite safe to tuck into a few years after the event.
Designs from Cakes by Carina
What is Traditionally Done with the Top Tier?
The top tier of a wedding cake would traditionally be saved until the first child of the couple is christened.
But when couples began to wait much longer before starting a family, the significance of the top tier changed. More recently, couples preferred to be save this tier for their first wedding anniversary.
Do You Need Three Tiers on a Wedding Cake, or Can You Have Less?
Every wedding is different, and they are not one-size-fits-all occasions. Therefore, more and more couples are choosing to ditch the three-tier wedding cake tradition, in favour of a single-tier alternative. This could be because of budget constraints, preference, or how it will look compared to other parts of their reception.
However, you should make sure that you have enough cake to feed all of your guests. While also making sure that you’re not left with a lot of fresh cake, and nobody to eat it. Especially if you’re jetting off on honeymoon and the left-behind cake will be wasted.
Design by LuxeCakes & Artisan Bakes
How Much Wedding Cake Do You Actually Need?
Much like cake making itself, it’s about striking the perfect balance between the different ingredients involved – so, in this case, your budget, number of guests, and aesthetic preference.
If you find yourself going gaga for giant cakes with lots of height, then you may believe that a stack of at least four tiers is essential. However, in reality, that could be too much cake for your wedding, and push you over budget! Luckily for you, though, cake makers have devised many creative solutions… Because rather than ordering additional, unnecessary tiers, you can request taller, slimmer cakes for each tier. These are very much en vogue right now, so most bakers will be happy to oblige, giving you the extra height without extra cake.
Wedding Cake Servings and Sizes
This easy-to-you guide below makes sizing up your tiers a piece of (wedding) cake, with the size and number of tiers matched to the number of guests…