Make Your Wedding Inexpensive

Whenever I attend a wedding reception one thing that I always do as soon as I get the opportunity is to run over and take a good look at the beautiful wedding cake. I absolutely love looking at what most times, is an incredible creation that is a complete work of art and I must admit that I’ve seen some pretty nice ones in my day. I’ve tasted and relished both very expensive and some very inexpensive wedding cakes as cake is one of my favorite dessert items.

If you are trying to make your wedding inexpensive you are going to very quickly realize that the wedding cake can take quite a chunk out of your wedding budget. Most folks spend up to 2.5% of their wedding budget just on the wedding cake. Now 2.5% may not look like much on paper, but when you run the numbers it can really add up and remember that’s only for the cake!

Our goal here is to help you make your wedding inexpensive so we’re going to take a look at some alternatives to keep you from busting your wedding budget and help you save money on a wedding cake since not every bride and groom has the budget to order the most expensive cake available.

Now I’m not much of a sweet eater but I do love my cake and I will be the first one to tell you that just because the cake is expensive and looks like something out of a fairy tale, it doesn’t always mean that it’s going to taste great. I’ve had some inexpensive wedding cakes that have completely blown away some of those expensive creations.

So what is the secret? How does one have a magnificent wedding cake on a budget? Well here are a few cost cutting measures that will help you keep your wedding inexpensive and keep your wedding guests happy too.

First I must prepare you. You really need to go into this with the right attitude and mind set. By that I mean take a common sense approach. In reality the cake is going to be raved about for a relatively short time during your celebration before it gets cut up and everyone begins devouring it. The most important part to you should be the top layer which is traditionally frozen and then enjoyed on your first anniversary together.

Wedding cakes can require a lot of labor to decorate, so where you purchase your cake plays a tremendous role in what it’s going to cost you. The fancier the wedding cake is, the more time it will take to decorate that cake. If you choose to have a wedding cake bakery make one for you it can end up breaking your budget just because of the labor involved in decorating it for you.

Many wedding venues will offer to do your wedding cake for you however you should exercise caution when dealing with them. Unfortunately in many cases they will usually start out with a very basic wedding cake and by the time they get done hitting you with all the fees for enough upgrades to have the wedding cake of your dreams, they can very easily end up being even more expensive than the bakery.

A good recommendation would be to look at some alternative options to the bakery. Don’t take me wrong, the bakery is my preferred choice. Those guys are very skilled professionals, but if you are wedding planning on a budget it is usually not an option.  One good choice you may not have thought about is your local supermarket. Yes, they do make wedding cakes!

I would advise you shop around at several of them just browsing their cakes. The skills and abilities of the staff that bake and decorate the cakes can vary greatly between stores. Keep browsing around at different stores until you find one where the cakes look like the store has a staff with enough skills and talent to make and decorate the cake that your heart desires. I have enjoyed many of these cakes at weddings and believe me the vast majority of them have tasted equal to or better than a lot of the more expensive fancier cakes that I’ve had.

Even if the budget is extremely tight we can still find ways to make your wedding inexpensive. Most of us have at least one friend or relative who is a great baker. In my case I lucked out because my future brother in law at the time was a teacher in a culinary school and he baked us the most beautiful and tasty carrot cake that you could ever imagine. How much did it cost? Not a thing because it was his wedding gift to us. Both you and your beau should do a mental inventory of your friends and relatives with baking and decorating skills and you may just luck out like we did. He was happy because it was his gift to us and we were happy because we didn’t break our bank.

Tomorrow in part two of Save Money On Your Wedding Cake we will be exploring some really cool tips and techniques that you can use to get the most from your wedding dollar when buying a wedding cake. Yes I’m saving the best for last!

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