I had my wedding a few months ago in Canada and thought I’d share a tip that saved me a lot of money and prevented wasting food. In my experience, the majority of the guests do not eat cake at a South Asian wedding, and usually we have more popular traditional desserts present as well.
I decided to use cake dummies in my cake which are styrofoam cake shapes, they are then covered in fondant to look like real cake tiers and are used in magazine shoots and window displays. They never go bad, so as long as you take care of them you can re-use them. I had a four tier cake, only the top tier was real cake, the bottom three were dummy tiers. It’s a great idea to **save hundreds **here in Canada or the States, and still have that photo op during the cake cutting!
Re: Tip to have an affordable wedding cake (and less wastage)
Well I had the same issue a few months back when I was looking for a cake for my wedding. We decided to go for a 3tier with a few flowers on top. And one thing I realized during my cake research - contact vendors other than desi or big names (esp those that are in the heart of downtown). You can find GREAT cakes at small Italian local bakeries that literally charge half the price of Desi vendors or big cake companies. And always remember… NOT EVERYBODY EATS CAKE!
Re: Tip to have an affordable wedding cake (and less wastage)
I’m quite lucky cos my family has a few bakers, so we always have someone to make it for free for family weddings. Otherwise we tend to get plain cakes from M&S (they do lovely plain white iced ones) and decorate it ourselves. A friend of mine decorated her own mehndi cake with flowers, looked really lovely (although make sure you remember to get the flowers sprayed by the florist or you won’t be able to eat the cake!)
