My best friend is getting married in late July. She lives in a very rural town in east texas. I will be attending her wedding also but I am driving from south Texas. The baker that is making her wedding cake has the nearest cake shop (or what seems like one) to her home/reception. From what the bride has told me, she is charging her an arm and a leg ($8/serving) for a simple cake with swiss dots that feeds 100. The bride found out thru various acquaintances that I have a nack for baking cakes and has asked me to make her wedding cake (either travel with it or make it at her home). So my issue is:
1.) The other baker was a really good high school friend of mine.
2.) The other baker will also be attending a birthday party I will be attending that same weekend (it's her SIL).
3.) For some odd reason the other baker will be collecting payment at the reception as opposed to prepayment so my friend can just cancel her cake 2 weeks before hand without any consequences.
Should I do the cake for my best friend (as a gift) and take potential income from the other baker whom I will also see at the other event and I am sure she will know that I made the cake (if I decide to). Please help,
Trapped between a rock and a hard place.
Fedra

If you can be comfortable with it then make the cake, but if you are going to feel guilty or uneasy about it then it's probably not worth it.

All I can say is that I would not do this. I try to live by "do unto others as you would have them do unto you". It sounds like the order has already been placed with the other baker. Maybe there was no contract but my word is as good as a contract for me and I would hope the same would hold true for the bride.
If the other baker was a good of yours and you took that cake order from her I can imagine the birthday party would be very uncomfortable.
So...I guess I am saying put yourself in the other person's shoes and take an objective look at the situation.
Hope it all works out. Have a good night.

"3.) For some odd reason the other baker will be collecting payment at the reception as opposed to prepayment so my friend can just cancel her cake 2 weeks before hand without any consequences. "

This is not necessarily true. Most bakers start purchasing supplies and have put in some time and money into the design of the cake at two weeks so there could be financial consequences for the baker that is losing the sale. I just feel it would be bad taste to do that to another baker.

Go with your gut feeling, if you're not feeling good about it don't do it.

I'm truely sorry if this sounds harsh but if you have to ask on here, your conscience is already telling you that something is not right. At the end of the day, you know in your heart what way this should be handled. Good luck to you and hopefully everything works out for everyone.

i can see both sides of the fence here. and i guess i'll be the first to say it. this is your BEST FRIEND getting married and she's asking you to make her cake. i get what everyone says about the other baker but even if tell the bride you are not gonna make her cake she may cancel the order and find somewhere else anyway. i don't know what cakes pricing goes for in your area, but $8 a serving for a simple cake sounds a bit much. maybe you should talk to the other baker? if it was for anyone else i would just say don't do it, but it's your best friends wedding. if the 3 of you are friends i feel like you should be able to work it out. Good Luck, this sounds like a difficult situation to be in

I find it odd that you think the baker's cake is isn't worth $8.00. You would not want someone to devalue your cake or to cancel.

I have to order my fondant in advance and there may have been cutters, etc., purchased. I have the design sketched on graph paper with all the components to scale. Just because the final payment is due on delivery, doesn't mean there is not a contract... there certainly is a verbal contract. I'm just saying that you are contemplating being the customer that starts the vents on this site.

I told a relative cancel a cake nine months before the date. She had just given the lady the deposit a few days before I volunteered at a family gathering. I told her to forfeit the deposit for the lady's time. There was no tasting and the price was scribbled on the picture that the bride provided. The baker had zero time invested. In fact, it was rather unprofessional. If it had been closer, I would have explained that the lady had held the date and it would be hard to replace the order on little notice.

I'm confused that your best friend found out through other acquaintances that you make cakes...she didn't know that already? Anyway, if she felt that $8 a serving was too high she shouldn't have agreed to it to begin with. I think it would be in poor taste for her to cancel so close to the wedding. Enjoy the wedding as a guest and leave the cake to the other baker.

I think 8.00 a serving is crazy. If my best friend asked me to make her cake I would be honored and do it. But.... it is her place to handle the cake order and business contract she has made for the other baker. When someone asks me to make a cake I don't say....do you already have someone else....did you ask someone else first? i might suggest if she thinks the amount is crazy that she handle that with the baker. If the baker says...no way, it is 8.00 then she made her choice to possibly have no order to bake. Sounds like a mess and you have to choose but if my best friend asked me to make her cake I would. The mess is hers to deal with

Chonte... look at the times of the posts... I was not referring to you. If the lady has a business and she gets $8.00 for her work, then her work is worth $8.00, that is a fact. A sale is not made until the value of the product is worth MORE than the amount of money given up.

Your area is my area too. We have Duff. That's about as high as it gets.

Your friend obviously thought $8/serving was ok when she booked the cake. It's not your job to come swooping in to fix what you perceive as an injustice on the part of the first baker. I would stay out of it if I were you. Suppose your cake, for some reason, isn't up to the quality expected? Then you have two friends mad at you. Better to walk away and have no one mad at you.

I think that you should just go to enjoy the wedding. Don't get stressed out with trying to make a cake and the worrying over your other friend from HS, and how it would effect your relationship. Not only do you not want to upset your other HS friend, but it can just snowball and you could end up making a lot of other people mad. Also as nice as it would have been to make my best friends wedding cake (and let me tell you that hands down I could have done a better job, that cake was a train wreck!), I would also hate to make something for her that she didn't absolutely love. If something went wrong and it didn't turn out perfect, its her wedding cake one of the center pieces for what should be that happiest day of her life, and on the off chance that she isn't walking on clouds and something went wrong, better it be from someone else! So maybe I'm just over thinking and going into the land of what if a little to much but I would just go and enjoy the wedding. If the cake from the other person turns out less than stellar then you can always offer to make them an anniversary cake or something latter on down the road!

This decision really is between the bride and the baker. First of all, how dumb is it for the baker not to have a contract and deposit? However, regardless of that, she has surely incurred expenses at this point and anticipates the income. I think it would be very unethical of the bride to cancel the order three weeks before delivery.

I think your best course of action is to point out to the bride that the baker has already spent time and money preparing to make her cake and it would not be fair to her to cancel the order at this late date. I think the only ethical thing to do is decline to make the cake.

Fedra I would let things stay as is. Besides some of the reasons already mentioned, the one that is going to end up getting hurt (meaning feelings, confusion, more stress etc) is the bride. With the bride being your best friend I'm sure you don't want to see her getting caught up in a "cake war" especially one she didn't start. Let her enjoy her day. It's stressful enough planning a wedding....a battle between who should make the cake will just make things worst.

Besides she may need your support in another role.

What is happening? Bluehue, I completely agree, again!

This isn't going to sound nice from a professional stand point, but my loyalty would lie with my best friend.

A) I would think that $8 a serving is excessive and that the other baker is taking advantage of the fact that there aren't a lot of choices in that area. It really irks me when any business does that, but it would really bother me when happening to someone I care about.

B) I would love to make a cake for my best friend's wedding. You have to have a cake on your wedding day, so I can see why she may have felt obligated to go to this other baker, even though the price is quite steep. I wouldn't have any qualms about helping my friend if she asked me.

With that said, it is unfortunate for the other baker, especially if supplies have already been purchased. I would have my friend cancel her order asap and offer to reimburse the other baker for the cost of any supplies she already purchased to see if that could relieve some of the tension, since she will still be saving money. But, ultimately my allegiance would be with my best friend.

If the bride was the OP's best friend, the bride should have gone to the OP to begin with rather than checking with the local baker. It seems that now that the wedding is almost at hand, she may be trying to cut expenses and now wants a free/cheap cake. I feel it is wrong to knowingly involve yourself in a situation where you will cause issues for another baker. Even if $8 seems to high for some, the bride agreed to the price.

Question for the OP: You say the cake the bride has already ordered is a "simple cake with swiss dots", but you don't tell us what KIND of cake it is. If its just a simple white cake with buttercream filling it might be hard to justify $8 a serving, but we don't know that its a simple white cake with buttercream filling, do we?

As to the ethical issues surrounding the bride's breaking her (albeit verbal) contract with the original baker at this late stage I'm with bluehue.

I cannot understand why people on this site are trashing the original baker with the $8.00 serving price. On any other thread you would be praising the baker for getting her value. Not everyone is on a budget and $8.00 cakes are there for the people who see the value and can afford them. My regular cakes are two to four times the prices of my competitors. My ingredient cost is higher than their retail prices. Does that mean I am gouging my customers, and how dare I do that to people? No. My cakes are catering to a totally different market. Sometimes I think some people forget that other income levels exist.

Reimbursing the baker for supplies is not the point. She will lose $800.00 in income for that weekend that she cannot replace. This is wrong, ethically from a business standpoint, and morally from a friendship standpoint. If she cancels, I would like to see the original baker sue for the breach of the verbal contract. I am sure she has enough evidence to show that she was to provide the cake.

I agree, the $8 per serving isn't the real issue..if it was, the bride shouldn't have agreed to the price and kudos to the baker for getting that price. I always try and do the right thing and if the decision to steal business is questionable to you than don't do it. It's not worth the awkward feelings you'll have at the wedding. This was the brides decision to use that baker, I'm in kentucky but originally from Tampa, my friends know that when it's their big day I'll gladly pack up all my equipment and drive 15 hrs to Tampa and do their wedding cake.