How soon does everyone decorate their cakes. I've just done kids cakes for a long time and am now starting to do wedding cakes. I usually always decorate the day of but wedding cakes are so much more time consuming I'm just curious if anyone does them the day before also or just the day of.

Bake two days ahead, decorate the day before. So for a Saturday wedding I bake on Thursday and decorate on Friday.

I bake Wednesday, fill Thursday, and decorate Friday. If I had less cakes to do, I would condense that timeline down and bake Thursday.

If the cake is really big ( 4 tiers, with 3 layer of cake in each teir) I bake on Wednesday and spend Thursday, Friday and Sat morning leveling, filling, and all the rest. If its a little bit smaller, I bake on Thursday and decorate on Friday and Saturday morning if necessary.

Thank you for your comments. So after you fill and decorate do you put it in the fridge or just leave it out? I'm not sure which kind of filling I'm using yet but it will have cream cheese in it. Also the bride just sent me a message that she got the wedding top and its 12" inches long. The top tier is only 6". I don't know what she is thinking. I'm going to have to get with her and plan something else. It seems that it will look silly hanging over the cake and she says its very heavy.

I bake Tuesday, I ganache either Wednesday or Thursday , Fondant , Thursday or Friday and finish decorating . I sometimes finish off on Saturday . But I prefer to have the cake done by the day before.

I almost exclusively use mudcake though and it is way better if it matures for several days.

What is mud cake?

It is a dense cake that we use a lot in Australia, it is made by a melt and mix method and always contains chocolate.

It has a great shelf life and keepability, it actually improves and gets moister and more flavoursome as it ages.

It can be made in almost any flavour imaginable . From traditional chocolate , to a raspberry swirl or lemon.