Hello, I am new to cake decorating and found a picture of a gorgous cake on this website to make for my parents anniversary (see attachment). The thing I am confused about is, do I put the icing on top first or do I do the sides first? How would I go about this?

It looks to me like a fondant covered cake with piped royal icing. cover your cake first with fondant and then pipe the dots and the sides.

it looks like it was frosted in teal then the covered in the ivory fondant. then the detail was added in royal icing/buttercream.