Hello incredible brain-trust,

So, I am very new to the baking world. I did my first wedding cake at the start of the year for a family member and from this have had multiple cake requests.

In a months time I am going to have my first sample session for a wedding and I am trying to gather all the information I can.

I am unsure if I should provide cupcakes or cakes slices for the sampling?

I have provided them with a list of flavours that they could chose from and they have selected choc mud, caramel mud, white mud and red velvet.

Should I then provide a range of buttercream flavours to sample with these?

I am not charging them for the samples ( I had no idea that you were supposed to!)

Thanks in advance and sorry for my novice questions!

I have only done a few but I did cake slices on a plate then had another plate with assorted frosting.

The only problem is the money you are spending making all the cake flavors and then all the different frosting options. I usually let them only pick 2-3 flavors. 

I have done consultations several different ways.   At 1st I would bake up a 2 layer 6" round, decorated simply and send it home w/the customer.   This works o.k. but you don't get any feed back expecially if they don't follow through w/an order :(   Then I started baking up small cakes w/extra batter as I baked for orders, froze them and cut pieces as needed.  This is good.   You can make up 3, 4 or many more cakes, well wrapped in the fzr for whenever you might need them.   Some people take a slice or two of each flavor placing them in into a 6" round, wrapping that so you have different flavors instead of needing to thaw several different cakes just to sample one slice of each.   I never did cupcakes.  To me they bake up differently than a whole cake so it's not a real example of what a wedding cake would taste like -- as I said, that's just my humble opinion :)   I did many bridal fairs and because of health laws have to cup samples, what fit best in a cup was about 1/2 of a slice.  This is really the perfect amount for someone to 'taste' you cake w/o having waste.  After throwing out many, many slices of cake -- people would take only one bite when you offer them 3 or 4 different options in a consult I finally ended up cutting a 'traditional serving' of cake in 1/2 as my consult offering.   I know some people make up a small sample cake to show off and cut a slice/serve right in front of a couple but I never did.   Some even serve on real plates, w/real silverwear.....offering tea or  coffee.   I didn't go that route.....just put 2 flavors on a paper plate w/platic fork and offer water as a drink. 

I would say it depends on your business and who you are doing cakes for. I tend to just do for friends and family so when I did a friends wedding I wanted to make it really special and brought out all the nice dishes etc., but if I were to doing a lot of business and getting a lot of requests I would keep it simple. I did have a lot of flavours for them to sample but I had done cupcakes for my fathers retirement party a few weeks earlier and froze extra cupcakes which made doing the tasting easy and i would defiantly do again. 

The buttercream flavours are  easy because I just made one batch and mixed in different flavours, I also provided filling options, but again I had stuff left over from other projects so I wasn't just making it just for this. 

Just a couple of days ago, I watched a free tutorial on just this situation, by Pretty Witty Cakes.  Here's the link:

https://www.prettywittycakes.co.uk/projects/consultations-and-early-stage-orders