I'm decorating a 2 tier wedding cake and 100 cupcakes for a wedding this Saturday. I'm finishing up decorating them this evening, and bride will be picking up everything early tomorrow morning. I filled the cupcakes and cake with a cream cheese filling and iced them in Italian meringue buttercream. . . does it need refrigerated tonight? It will be a little tricky fitting everything in the fridge so was wondering if it would be possible to leave some of it out. Thank you so much in advance!! 

Hopefully this makes since, it's my first time writing on this forum. =z 

Yes, it should be refrigerated.  Anything with cream cheese should not be out of the refrigerator for more than 2 hrs per the US Food & Drug Administration.

Welcome to the forum!

Ditto to Goreti's post above.  The cake should not be out of the refrigerator once delivered to the customer or venue for more than 2 hours either.   You should make sure the bride/venue/responsible person refrigerates the cake once it leaves your hands.

Thank you!! Got everything in the fridge last night and now waiting for the bride. Already talked to her a week ago about the cakes needing refrigerated until right before the reception so that's done.  =)

You're welcome!

I think i've been saying 4 accumulative hours -- where i allow 2 hours for taking it from refrigeration at the store and getting it back into the fridge and taking it out again and making it into cheesecake or cream cheese frosting and time otu again for decorating the cake trying to leave two hours for it to set out at the reception BUT

according to the 6th edition of the servsafe manager course:

"before using time as a method of control, check with your local regulatory authority for specific regulations."

this is the safest most responsible thing to do so you will know exactly what your locality requires from you -- this way you will be in complete compliance -- very important -- otherwise you have to decipher and do the following --

goes on to say:

"you can hold cold food without temperature control for up to 6 hours if you meet these conditions:

• hold the food at 41 degrees or lower before removing it from refrigeration
• label the food with the time you removed it from refrigeration and (label it with) the time you must throw it out -- the discard time on the label must be six hours from the time you removed the food item from refrigeration
• make sure the food temp does not exceed 70 degrees while it is being served. Throw out any food that exceeds this temperature
• sell serve or throw out food within six hours 

and since the cream cheese icing is being wagged in & out of the fridge you have to factor that in -- it's not being held at 41 degrees or lower so the 6 hours is a no go -- so contacting you local regulatory authority is everyone's best bet on this -- so you can get it clarified for your specific needs --

there's a haccp thing where you devise a whole plan to take care of this very sort of thing -- it means hazard analysis critical control point pronounced hazip --

so there's that 

because some cakes definitely get above 70 degrees while being served so we all need clarity for that to ensure safety for our clients -- and a cupcake would be the fastest at warming up -- so it's a serious thing and using a tested shelf stable recipe is clearly the best bet -- but i'd make sure that recipe complies with my own local regulatory authority too