I would say never put real flowers or silk flowers directly into a cake. It doesn't seem nice at all and apart from some real flowers which may be poisonous, even silk stems have been 'somewhere' before being put into the cake!!
I always use a cake pick, which is similar to a short straw with a point on the end. Can get them in different sizes, they are food safe, you just put the stem (or stems if more than one flower in a spray for example) into the pick and this is then pushed into the place you want on the cake, with just a milimetre of pick showing above the icing. This is all removed in one go when they come to cut the cake.

This works very well with fresh flowers as they can be kept in water til the last minute, as the pick will stop any water leaking into the cake.

Jan

petit-four, a great post! I'm using your post as the basis for part of my speech to brides ..... florists dont' work with food, *I* do, so the florist will not have the last say on what goes on the cake.

Thank you, indydebi!

I work with a local florist -- they ask me about doing cake flowers, and they help me out with arranging some of the trickier flowers on a cake. We have a good relationship. They actually are the ones who sort of said what I wrote -- "We're not a kitchen! We can't be. We don't want your clients to get sick, but we want our flowers to look great. We work with dirt, but we sure know our flowers!"

Not to be snarky, but about the cake vase thing...wouldn't a dish with oasis in it serve the same function? I can't find any prices listed for this thing anywhere online (I'm sure I haven't looked hard enough) but I can't imagine that they'd be cheaper than a plastic saucer with a wedge of wet oasis in it.

This is such a great post! I have to do a cake soon with fresh flowers and I had no idea where to begin!
Thanks for all the great info.

i found one for 21.95 at kitchenkrafts.com

http://www.kitchenkrafts.com/product.asp?pn=CD8273&sid=FROOGLE&EID=FRCD8273&bhcd2=1211819823