Avoiding Wedding Cake Disasters

We all love watching videos of wedding cake disasters. They're hilarious… as long as the wedding cake that crashes was someone else's wedding cake. The memory can be painful, however, if the wedding cake disaster was your own. Such an event has reduced many brides to tears and, in the minds of many, ruined a good wedding day.

What leads to wedding cake disasters? There can be a lot of explanations, some of them beyond our control, but here are four factors that can set a big day up for a catastrophe with the wedding cake:

High Traffic Areas do Not Mix with Wedding Cakes

This should be obvious. It should be, but it’s apparently not. Some time back I designed a wedding cake in one of the area’s most prestigious wedding locations. The ownership of the wedding location both hosted and catered the wedding reception. They should have known better, but they put the cake in one of the highest traffic areas in the room. Children were running around and even ducking under the table to reach their goal all evening. Fortunately, that four tiered wedding cake never made the wedding cake disasters reel on America’s Funniest Home Videos, but eventually that set up will lead to a wedding cake disaster even if only because some adult wasn’t paying attention.

The solution is simple: You can minimize your risk of wedding cake disaster by having your wedding cake placed in a location that is low traffic while still being in a highly visible spot so it can be the wedding reception centerpiece that you commissioned.

Wedding Cakes Do Not Like Heat

More specifically, it’s the icing on the wedding cake that doesn’t like the heat. The type of icing you choose will determine how much heat the cake can withstand, but eventually too much heat can cause the icing on your wedding cake to sweat, soften, run, and eventually melt away from the cake causing the proverbial wedding cake disaster.

So as picturesque as it may be, don’t ask to have your wedding cake placed next to the roaring fire in the fireplace or next to a window with the summer sun beating down on your it.  That's a recipe for a wedding cake disaster.  If you are having an outdoor wedding, rent a tent or at least a good patio umbrella to provide protection for your wedding cake. You commissioned the cake. Protect your investment.

Flimsy Tables will Not Reliably Support Your Wedding Cake

If you did your homework when you ordered your wedding cake, you found a cake that is moist and flavorful. Who wants to eat dry cake? A moist cake however, is not a light cake, especially when you consider the size of an average tiered wedding cake that serves one hundred fifty people. Choose a sturdy table that won’t wobble when you bump it or place something heavy upon it. Avoid the trap of ‘this is good enough’. Don’t tarnish your wedding memories with a wedding cake disaster.

 Avoiding Wedding Cake Disasters