Hi, unless I have things written down in front of me, I tend to undercharge for wedding cakes. Do any of you have an itemized list of costs you add on for wedding cakes... like piping on the sides, ribbons, bows, gumpaste flowers, etc. I tend to find my self charge the same for putting ribbon around the cake as for spending hours piping on intricate designs because I forget, or am afraid to charge for my time. Thanks for you help!

Cheryl

I'm looking forward to other's answers on this. I charge $25 for a GP bow topper--I know others charge more. I recently did a cake with lots of piping on it and charged an additional $20 per layer--the 6 layers ranged in size from 18" to 6". I've charged .50 for GP fall leaves and 1-1.50 per GP rose (nothing elaborate on the roses I've made) and I often purchase the GP roses from wholesalesugarflowers.com and just up the price I pay for them so I make some profit.

I don't itemize out things like piping, bc swags, etc. It's all part of the design to me. If I see that something will take me a lot more time to do, I will go up .25 or .50 per serving for that. Of course I charge for anything I have to buy like ribbon, flowers, etc.

I'm with debi don't do all that price for this and that. I have seen web sites and I cringe at the additional charges for flavors, ribbons, fillings, dots, and what have you. The only things I charge more for is chocolate and I use the best kind I can and they know it.

Don't be afraid to charge! I totally understand though because I was like that too, but I quickly got over that once I saw how much work I was actually doing on even the simplest cake.

Anyway. I keep a general guide that I use during consults so I can make sure I'm being compensated for my time and efforts.(I only do weddings and large parties BTW) I love doing this, but I can't reach my goals and dreams if I'm broke! I also don't do the itemized price for everything; I really suck at math and don't have the focus to "add this and add that" to get a price. I do it flat rate per project which includes everything.

Basically the guide it's sort of like a scale. A plain cake with ribbon would be a scale of 1 and a competition/ celebrity designer cake with lots of detail would be a scale of 5. For example, lets say the minimum order for any cake is $500 and starts at the scale of 1 and increases from there in terms price and detail. The 1 would be a butter cream cake with a ribbon and maybe dots or light scroll work. $500 please! thanks...lol

If you look at different photos, you can start to gauge which ones are a 1 versus a 3, and so on.

Almost all of my cakes are in the 1-3 because the "clean, simple, with maybe a ribbon and some scroll" look is so popular right now.