Five New Ways To Wedding Cake Style 2008
by: Michael Kabel
When you get right to it, the wedding cake is the symbolic and the literal centerpiece of your wedding. It's tough to imagine a wedding without one, and of course it's hard to think of a better "main event" for the reception than the cutting and feeding of the cake.
But a modern bride wants a modern wedding cake, and for those wedding planners looking to dress the cake up in some elegant style, modern pastry chefs are ready with a whole new school of style.
Calligraphy puts a signature style on any cake.
The elegance of calligraphy brings class and sophistication to any presentation. For modern pastry chefs, adding calligraphic script to the top or sides of a cake takes their glamour into a whole new tier of grace.
The calligraphy is up to the wedding planner, of course. The message could be simply the new couple's names or something more elaborate, like the date and a message. Some wedding planners also include a line or verse of appropriate poetry or song lyrics.
One idea to keep in mind when ordering calligraphy on the cake is to keep the contrast between the script and the cake background simple and distinctive. The script can be embellished with surrounding scrollwork or other refinements that make the contrast more pronounced. You want the script to be easily legible for every guest.
New shapes and new sizes for the cake itself.
Round is traditional, and it's nice enough… but the latest style point of view prefers to think out of the box when it comes to form and structure.
Pastry chefs can create round tiers that finish on a square or even a special shape of the wedding planner's choosing. They can create intricate shapes, like interlocking diamonds, or simply give sleek new contours to familiar circles and oval shapes.
Text, texture, and context.
Modern pastry decoration can create some jaw-droppingly lovely and intricate designs. There's no reason not to take advantage of their expertise by including vast swirls of icing decoration, including text, scrollwork, and even reproductions of your wedding gown pattern or inlay. If the cake is your centerpiece, you can use its texture to tie all the different decorative elements together.
Nothin' but flowers
Flowers add intricacy and texture to the wedding cake but offer limitless style options. Arranging many different flowers around the cake, in patterns, effects, and designs, creates a sumptuous presentation and can even work to advance a spring or garden theme.
Choosing the right flower for your design is largely a matter of matching the style and color scheme of the rest of your wedding. Remember too that the flower colors can work in counterpoint to the rest of the cake or even the entire presentation table decor.
Play it straight for the top
The perfect wedding cake needs a perfect topping, but the modern bride understands that sometimes the best topper is understated enough to let the rest of the cake's decorations shine. Planning the top should really be the last detail in the cake preparations, since it should be selected after everything else is in place. It's the "cherry on top," after all.