Cheap Wedding Cakes - Make Your Budget Wedding Cake The Belle Of The Ball

Trying to find cheap wedding cakes that are in the style and size you want can be a challenge - but there are things you can do.

These days many brides have a strict budget for their wedding, preferring to save money for the practicalities of married life rather than blow the lot on a dress and cake that will be used for one day.

However, a bride also wants her day to be special so when it comes to the cake a simple undecorated sponge cake isn't going to cut it.

The question facing many brides is how to get the cake they want at a price that fits within their budget.

Luckily there are several ways you can go about this - it's just a case of being a little bit clever.

It's worth saying straight off that you're not going to get a professional cake decorator to give you a hand designed wedding cake at a seriously reduced price because they take pity on you. Cake decorators work very hard on their creations and charge accordingly - as they should.

However many have introduced 'budget wedding cakes' in response to the demand for cheaper cakes so it's worth having a word with local cake decorators and seeing what they can do. The best thing is to state your budget up from which immediately lets the cake decorator know if there is anything they can do for you.

Many large stores with wedding sections now offer brides a budget wedding cake option cakes.

These cakes will be considerably cheaper than a wedding cake designed by an independent cake decorator because you are choosing from a small selection of cakes and are unlikely to be able to make any changes to the design. You are also likely to have to collect the cake yourself and take it to your wedding venue.

These types of cakes tend to quite traditional in design i.e. 3 tiered cakes with white or ivory icing and a flower decoration, making them ideal for couples who want that traditional feel for their weddings. You also have the option of adding your own decoration to the cake i.e. flowers in your wedding colours in order to personalise the cake more.

Fake wedding cakes are growing in popularity at the moment and can be a good way of saving money.

Fake case are either all fake, or more likely will have a real bottom tier with the rest faked. The advantages of a fake cake is that it is much lighter so can be stacked without internal supports, plus the price of the cake dummy is generally much cheaper than the price of the ingredients - all these factors can bring the price of a cake down.

However - it's worth remembering that the majoirty of the price of a cake is in the decoration, and a fake cake needs to be decorated to just the same high standard as a real cake, so if you want a highly decorated cake you may find that the savings on a fake cake are nowhere near what you first imagine.

Cake decorators are well aware of the need to keep costs down, so it's worth asking your local cake makers about whether they do fake cakes as most of them will - even if they don't widely advertise the fact - and it can be a way of getting a great cheap wedding cake.

If you're lucky enough to have a cake decorator in the family why not ask them to make your cake instead of giving you a wedding present?

Even if you don't have a cake decorator in the family you can still get them to make you cake for you.

Cupcakes - cupcakes look great when piled high on a stand - and they can be bought ready made but un-iced which means you can have them decorated to match your occasion. It's possibly to buy everything from the icing to the decorations ready made these days so all you really need is someone with an artistic touch to put it all together for you.

Traditional cakes - I would never suggest that someone who has no experience tries to stack tiered cakes. If they try and do it without using supports the cakes are likely to sink, and unless supports are level cakes are likely to topple over. However there are some lovely tiered cake stands around which hold each tier on a separate level with no supports needed and these are great starting point for my next suggestion. Go to a large supermarket and find 3 identical cakes in the plainest style you can - no writing, little decoration etc. Buy ribbon in the colours of the wedding and wrap it around the base of each cake. Buy some pretty cake decorations (or have them made) for the top of each cake and arrange them in an attractive manner and you have a pretty wedding cake at a fraction of the cost.

With wedding cakes, as with so many other things in life, you get what you pay for.

If you are buying an expensive wedding cake you are buying the expertise and the peace of mind that comes with it.

Cheap wedding cakes can be every bit as beautiful as their more expensive counterparts, but if you are using the goodwill and time of friends and family to save on costs you need to give some thought to what happens if it all goes wrong.

If your view is that at the end of the day a cake is just a cake, it will look pretty and hopefully there'll be some lovely photos of you cutting it, but come tomorrow it will be no more than crumbs then make all the savings you can.

If your cake means more to you than that, then perhaps cheap wedding cakes are not what you should be looking for. Going for a cheap wedding cake option can save a significant amount of money, however, if that means you will end up feeling cheated of the cake of your dreams, you have to ask yourself if the savings are worth the cost.