I know...... Another cake pricing question.....I'm sorry. I have been asked by a friend of mine to make her, as she likes to call it, "simple" wedding cake. HA, I'm flattered but at the same time don't want to kill myself here for nothing.... I know that simple means looks easy but really isn't!! I will attach a picture of the cake she likes...... She would like it silver on the bottom graduating to white on the top, covered in dragees, this time oposite silver on top graduating to white on the bottom. The sizes I'm looking at would be 6/9/12 (76 servings) or 8/10/12 (88 servings) I generally charge $4-$5 per serving for my fondant cakes but I know this one will be very time consuming with the dragees..... What are your thoughts on pricing...... please any advise would be helpful. Thank you again for looking and taking the time to help a fellow caker out. :)

AI would use your pricing for the cake and then calculate the amount of time you think it will take to do all of the dragees. If you think it will take 3 hours, multiply by an hourly fee (I charge 30/hr for my decorating for example). That is how I price my cakes: standard prices for cakes, icing, fillings and fondant and then estimate decorating time. I hope that is helpful!

By the time you're done putting all those beads on the top tier you will be swearing under your breath that you should have charged twice as much and at the end of the second tier down you will be vowing to NEVER take an order like this ever again by the time it's done you will be so angry at it that you won't even want to take a picture for your website.  There's a reason she asked YOU to do it...................no one else would, could - for the price she's paying.

AWhat's her budget?

AWow.. That's amazing wedding cake you have posted in the post. It is impossible to assume price for this but i think this is very costly. Thanks for sharing this ideas.

I had quoted her for a 6/9/12 silver cake with the dragees $500. Is that about right?? Yikes. Also having a devil of a time finding all those dragees. lol. Can you say bit off a tad more than i can chew. Oh well, I'll get it o=done one way or another. Would you suggest using luster dust to pain the fondant to get and even color or spraying it with say the wilton silver or the PME?? lol. 

A

It depends. How much will the ingredients cost you, and how many hours do you think the cake will take from start to finish (including prep, baking, decorating, packaging, and cleanup)? How much is your allocated overhead per order?

i don't know--the greatest concentration is on the smallest tier and since the smallest tier is white with silver dragees you can put them on in handfuls and then just fill in where needed--i don't see this costing a great deal of additional time to decorate--just me i guess--it's just not that big a deal imo--even if they were placed one by one--no biggie--

Nice try Jason.

I don't know, but probably $10 a serving.  That's a mint, and you may be uncomfortable charging so much but it looks like a really time consuming cake.

I don't think they are dragees. I think they are dots of royal icing. At least, that's how I´d do it. With the right consistency so you don't get pointy dots. It would be SO much quicker than sticking dragees on. Also notice that the dots aren't all the same size - so it could be different size dragees, or different size RI dots.

AThis cake is done in royal icing, I am sure of it. It would take an hour, so I would charge about $20 more.

A

Hi... having done a cake similar to this one I would definitely recommend piping instead of applying them... this cake was a nightmare... it literally took about 12 hours to get all of those silly (insert other more explicit words here!) silver balls on the cake!  It looks very effective, but I waaaay undercharged because I could never have dreamed it would take so long!