How many of you married ladies (or gentleman) made their own wedding cakes? I'm contemplating it but I'm not sure I want to put that pressure on myself...any suggestions?

I did not make my own wedding cake but in my humble opinion I would NOT suggest making your own cake. Wedding cakes are a lot of work alone, but add that to the wedding shower, rehearsal dinner, rehearsal, etc. and there is so much to keep a bride-to-be busy. Just relax and enjoy the events leading up to the wedding without the added pressure of constructing a cake.

I wasn't so into cakes when I got married but there is no way I would make my own, too much going on in the days before the wedding to have time and not be exhausted.

i made my own wedding cake. will see if i can post a pic. i did a three tier cake covered in fondant with string work on all three cakes. i n\\made sugar flowers too but didnt like how it turned out so i switched to fresh flowers.

it saves you a lot of money and you get exactly what you want. just plan your time properly and you should be fine. i would reccoment it.

i made my son's wedding cake and stacked grooms cake....

i had NO TIME TO GET MYSELF READY.

all the other ladies had everything perfect....i barely made it there in time....i'd never do it again...TOO MUCH STRESS...on an already stressful day.

just my humble opinion.

Well I plan on making my own wedding cake and grooms cake the day I get married...I also will be doing all the flower arrangements, bouquets, corsages, centerpieces etc...you name it and it will be done by me, who knows maybe I'll even cater it myself....no telling......I have the boyfriend again who was once my fiance, he doesnt' know it but he will be my fiance again and soon...I'm leaving it in God's hands

You pace yourself, you can do it...

and Congratulations!!!!

Keep on baking...Cindy

I made my wedding cake. I was on a very tight budget and I made everything-corsages, boutineers, bouquets, ring pillow, flower basket. The groom and groomsmen didn't wear tuxs but I made them matching vests. I was stressed out alot but what bride isn't? I enjoyed every minute of it. The actual day went by so fast and what I remember most is all the effort I put into making it a really special day. I have guest book(that I made,too) that I turned into a scrapbook with pics of everything I made and some of the actual items like chocolate bars wrappers in there. I'm glad I made my cake. I got so many compliments on it. It was very pretty and my first wedding cake to make!

Hmmm..I wasn't into cakes as much when I got married so I didn't even think of doing my own cake. Kjgjam22 is right - you'll get exactly what you want if you do it yourself (I didn't get what I expected...but it did taste good). But I still wouldn't add that stress on yourself. I wasn't stressed at all about my wedding and I had a TON of fun that day and would NOT have wanted to be worried about all that is necessary when you make a wedding cake.

I did my own wedding cake. This was my second marriage, so no shower, and all that, but still did a 3 tiered cake, and most of the cooking for the reception.
I also did my daughters wedding cake, plus her flowers, AND most of the cooking for her reception (enough food for 100).
Both cakes are in my photos. Mine is the cream with silk flowers, and hers is the Victorian stand with 4 side cakes (the flowers look black, but they were Victorian lilac).
I would do it all over again as far as the cakes are concerned. But not the cooking!
I knew how I wanted my cake, and was not going to pay someone else to do it.( I'm sure it would have been good, but I wanted to do it).
My daughter would not have ever even considered letting anyone else do her cake. That was all she ever talked about from the time she was a little girl, I was not going to let her down!
I have one more daughter that will be getting married, and I will do her cake, but NOT the cooking for the reception. That is way to much for one person.
My advise is if you decide to do your own cake, choose a design that is pretty simple, and if anything can be done in advance (such as silk flowers or even royal, or gum paste flowers), that would be a big time saver.

I was vetoed on making my own picture cake even though I owned everything already to make it. They claimed the "licensed kitchen" issue, but the picture cake was only going to be eaten by DH & myself, so not an issue. Unless you own everything already, have a tiny wedding (less than 50), you aren't going to save money or stress.

Hindsight 20/20, I would have still used the bakery we did for the centerpiece cakes because they just tasted awesome. As for our picture cake, I would have done that myself and frozen it whole a month before the big day. The baker we used for that cake (because of politics is why with my IL's business), TOTALLY botched the cake design. Not hard, spice, 3-tier stack, no border, snowflakes all over. We got... 3-tiered, two layers stacked with the top layer pillared with a gray ribbon around that board(NOT one of our colors mind you), border, ROUGH as all getout icing, a snowflake here or there, which is all very forgivable, we all have bad-hair days.. But we cut into it, and instead of her moist spice cake, it was tasteless white pound cake.

The thing is, only you can know what the way to go for you and your big day is. Go with your dream baker or one you know does really good work because with the amount of time and stress you're going to save yourself by hiring this out, it's well worth it. Then, you can have a memory of an awesome cake instead of how stressed out you got with all the DIY projects.

I made my own wedding cake, worked 17 hours on it. Lambeth style 3 tiers. Way too much worjk and stress in my opinion. You have enough to do with getting yourself ready, having your hair done etc. and you know you can only do so much ahead of time on the cake. I personally wouldn't advise it.

NO WAY! I am not planning on making my daughters either. Way too many others things to have to worry about. Enjoy you day!
Judy

I didn't make my own wedding cake but I made my own 10th anniversery party cake so I would get what I wanted! I wasn't happy with my wedding cake.

I would say it depends on what you want. There are a lot of beautiful designs that don't require a lot of detailed work that you could easily do.


Debbie

Thanks for all of the advice!! I won't have too much to do before the wedding..it's basically all done now and i'm not having a very formal wedding, just the fire hall type of thing. I'll have the week before my wedding off from work so I'm definitely considering making the cake but I'll have to plan out that week and see how much time I have

I definately would NOT make my own wedding cake. I just got married and thought about doing it and fortunately decided against it. The week before the wedding is stressful enough with everything you have to do, even if you are the most prepared person in the world, which I was. Unexpected things come and you do not want to be the one that is dealing with a cake problem a couple of days/hours before your wedding. Let the baker deal with that.

Any other time I would say go for it, but NOT on your wedding day. Don't add any stress onto the event. Flowers are one thing, they are much easier, but the cake ~ anything can happen with that.. Even the best decorators have problems and it would be horrible to have happen to you.

The less you have to do right before the wedding, the more fun you have!

Even if you have most everything done ahead of time, the week of your wedding is going to bring a new meaning of busy into your life (which rivals about the fifth week home with a new baby, the novelty is over, you're tired, and you have ZERO help to get things done, ESPECIALLY from your FI) with all of the running around you'll need to do. There are things like final payments, hair & makeup trials, final alterations, final decisions, family coming in from OOT, decorating, setting up the room, Murphy's Law, etc.

I made the groom's cake for our wedding but I was a little scared to do the actual wedding cake. It can be done, but I didn't want to deal with the added stress of making the cake on top of everything else that was already going to be going on that day. I didn't think I would be very busy because we had everything done ahead of time but when it comes down to it there is still SO much left to do!

I had not been introduced to the joys of cake decorating when I got married. So I didn't make my cake. But I was into sewing and I sewed my own gown. I think it is similar to making your own cake in that, I got exactly what I wanted, any changes were my own doing, and since I could sew (and now can make cakes) I wasn't paying some one else to do what I could do.

Like everyone says, planning and organizing your timeline is crucial.

Good luck.