I may just be a cake fatty but I still remember how delicious my cake was 13 years ago! (wish I could get a slice now!) and even better than mine, was my sisters at her wedding 8 years ago! I also remember those that looked gorgeous and tasted bad and those that were downright ugly and tasted even worse than that! The point is, I remember the cake and chances are other people will too. You don't want people to talk about your wedding and how they ran out of cake! If you are talking about how your wedding budget is 3 grand and the cake is 600 of the budget, ok then. But if you are spending 20 grand and the cake is 600, it seems like..what the heck, ya know?
Twenty years ago when I got married, I didn't do cake. We found a sweet woman that was doing catering out of her home and she kind of threw in the cake. It was very beautiful, but relatively small. Anyway, it seems like everytime I pick up one of these magazines - "How to cut budget - Cake." That should be the title of every article. With all the shows about weddings, etc - I think there should be more emphasis on the cake. It is as traditional as the dress. Not that I create traditional cakes, but when "so called" people of authority (and that's how bride-to-be's see these magazines) tell them to cut the cake cost, chances are they will start cutting cake out - and that hurts ALL of us. That stinks!
What..do we have to get cake lobbyists in DC - push the cake, push the cake, push the cake.....hahaha. In ref to advertising - word of mouth is still the best form of advertising. Of course, I do some commercials every now and again. take care - Cakesmith
Absolutely correct! Word of mouth is the best and cheapest. I am not even open yet and I have outstanding orders for the end of the month. And I have had to turn down orders. People love their cake! I wonder how many brides read that and went No Way!
I agree with the idea that The Knot favors the other service providers because they spend more advertisement dollars. They feature all those cakes in the galleries for free I think, and give out "Knot Picks" willy-nilly (not to say the cakes aren't beautiful, but there seems to be no rhyme or reason to who gets that distinction - or do they give it to bakeries that advertise?) 1/2 the time they don't even credit the bakery next to those gallery photos.
I also see them as the credit for the fake cake, sheet cake, and "skimp on the cake" source almost every time I see this "budget tip". It makes me mad every time, and I always leave comments saying so.
I also go out of my way to blast other wedding blogs that give out these worthless tips.
J
YES! The sheet cake thing! I get brides who are nervously like "I don't know anything about ordering a wedding cake"....and then later they say "Isn't there a way to, like, get a smaller cake and then sheet cakes or something?" Obviously she'd been reading those "helpful" articles.
I kindly explain that my sheet cakes are the same base price as my wedding cakes. The only time it is cost effective for them to buy kitchen cakes is when the wedding cake is fairly detailed/high price per serving...or if they need extra servings that don't fit into, say, the four-tiered design they requested. But for a simple cake, I tell them, they may as well put it all into the tiers...it looks better and costs about the same.
"Ohhhhhh" they say. Gotta re-educate these people from all these weird "advice" columns!!!
WORD OF MOUTH! AMEN! I do NO advertising. I sit and home and wait for people to call or email because they had a cake at so-and-so's graduation and now they want one for Susie Who's baby shower. There is NO more powerful advertisement than seeing a cake you feel is pretty, then having a mouthful of cake that makes you squeeze your eyes shut happily and wish you had ten times as many taste buds. (Ok, I don't mean that to sound like I think I make better cake than any other decent baker, but you guys know what I mean!) I survive soley on word of mouth simply because I am still raising little kids and don't want this to become a 50 hours a week thing. Someday, when they're off with their own lives, maybe I'll go big, but for now, nope. But I never get cold calls, it's always someone who has ordered from me before, or who was at an event I supplied. I LOVE that! 
So I was just on the Knot and came across this feature...
http://wedding.theknot.com/wedding-planning/wedding-cakes/articles/insider-wedding-cake-tips.aspx
We all need to leave REAL budget saving tips on there - it's full of the sheet cake/fake cake crap advise.
Jen
I kindly explain that my sheet cakes are the same base price as my wedding cakes.
Our sheet cakes and single-tier round cakes have a lower base price ($2.50-$4/serving) than multi-tier cakes ($5-7/serving) because they require less labor.
I kindly explain that my sheet cakes are the same base price as my wedding cakes.
Our sheet cakes and single-tier round cakes have a lower base price ($2.50-$4/serving) than multi-tier cakes ($5-7/serving) because they require less labor.
I just mean...for a buttercream iced and filled cake with a ribbon, I charge $3.50/serving (its my lowest priced cake). A kitchen cake still has to be torted and iced the same (so that everyone gets a similar slice) and its exactly the same amount of work to torte, ice, and fill a rectangle cake for the kitchen as it is a round cake for the tiers. Wrapping a ribbon and stacking is negligible. So yes, for the absolute base style cake, I do charge the same. My pricing goes up quickly for any type of work involved in decoration.... but many times my brides asking about kitchen cakes are not even wanting a fancy cake...just a simple one. So that's when I tell them it doesn't make a lot of sense to get a kitchen cake if they are already buying a very simple wedding cake.
I think a lot of people, when they ask about sheet cakes or kitchen cakes, imagine what is often called a "Texas Sheet Cake" which is essentially a very thin layer baked (and still IN) a cookie sheet with icing only on top. No real decoration. THAT would be cheaper, yes, but when you make sheet cakes that are pretty much the same as the wedding cake, no less cost or effort is involved so it should cost roughly the same.
I feel like at a wedding most people dont refuse cake even if they dont want it. The servers plop it down on the table and are off the the next. After the cake cutting sometimes people are out on the dance floor so the servers put cake at every seat whether a person is there or not. I just dont see how ordering half the cake (especially if you order half of your RSVP'd yes list) would work. As a wedding planner I would never advise my brides to do this. Not having enough cake not only makes the baker look bad but the servers at the venue and me, the wedding planner!
I think a lot of people, when they ask about sheet cakes or kitchen cakes, imagine what is often called a "Texas Sheet Cake" which is essentially a very thin layer baked (and still IN) a cookie sheet with icing only on top. No real decoration. THAT would be cheaper, yes, but when you make sheet cakes that are pretty much the same as the wedding cake, no less cost or effort is involved so it should cost roughly the same.
Right...and I don't believe that half the guests should have a nice, quad-torted cake while others get a square of plain 2" sheet cake.... so "Kitchen cakes" for me are plain, quad-torted cakes that are just iced in buttercream but not decorated.
For instance I had a few Bat Mitzvah's recently where the cake design was $7-$8/serving and the five tiers didn't serve quite enough, so we threw in an extra cake in the back for cheaper to serve the rest of the guests. To me, that's what kitchen cakes are for. That, or if you have a SUPER duper fancy cake that is, again, $8-$10/serving and you only want that one to feed maybe 75 and the rest in the back. But technically, the guests really should not know who is getting the wedding cake and who is getting the kitchen cake, after its served up, unless they've studied who gets fondant and who gets buttercream.
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