How Much Does a Wedding Cake Cost? 

Some of the most well-known and well-loved wedding traditions of all time involve cake, ranging from "cake smashes" to "freezing the top tier for your first anniversary." And although some customs have been lost to the passage of time, many married couples still strongly emphasise the dessert. 79% of newlyweds engaged a wedding cake baker in the previous year, as reported by The Knot Real Weddings Study, which polled nearly 12,000 couples who got married in 2022. 

On the other hand, the typical cost of a wedding cake has gone up in tandem with general inflation. Find out below the going rate for wedding cakes in 2018 and how your spending will change depending on factors such as the number of guests, the size of the cake, the design, and more. Do you need to begin your search for a baker who specialises in wedding cakes? You can locate reviews and local businesses to work with by checking out The Knot Marketplace. 

Wedding Cake Prices: How Much Does a Wedding Cake Cost?

How Much Should I Pay for My Wedding Cake?

No answer is appropriate for this topic because the response is entirely dependent on the cake's role in the event being celebrated. If you are a huge fan of baking or have a sweet tooth, you may honour that by devoting more of your wedding budget to your cake. It is something that you can do to show your appreciation for baking or your sweet taste. You may express your gratitude for both things meaningfully by doing anything like this. 

The reason that wedding cakes cost what they do is the same reason that a couture wedding dress costs more than a dress from Primark or the reason that an oil painting costs more than a print. Pike's explanation might be helpful if you need clarification about why a wedding cake costs more than you initially anticipated.

You are not acquiring something manufactured in large quantities in a way that is both quick and inexpensive, such as a cake from a grocery store. You are rewarding a highly skilled and experienced expert for the time it takes them to finish the assignment to a high degree by paying them to create and make something unique for you. In addition, you are paying them for the amount of time it takes them to complete the task to a high degree.

The function of the cake should also play a role in determining how much money you set aside for its purchase in connection with your wedding. Do you plan to use it mostly for decorative purposes as a feature on the dessert table rather than feeding it to everyone, or do you mean to use it in place of your dessert and, as a result, require sufficient cake to serve at least one piece to each of your guests? If you plan to use it instead of your dessert, you will need sufficient cake to provide at least one piece to each guest.  

Why Are Wedding Cakes More Expensive?

It is a widely held misconception that bakers automatically demand more prices for wedding cakes than other celebration cakes. On the other hand, a more in-depth investigation demonstrates that this is only sometimes the case. 

Mixing massive amounts of batter made with natural, high-quality ingredients and baking them to perfection, carefully layering and constructing the tiers with the appropriate internal supports, and finally decorating and transforming it into a delicious artistic centrepiece are all things that a good wedding cake designer will spend many hours doing. It includes communicating with you, understanding your style, sketching a one-of-a-kind design, organising your cake tasting, and so on.

Traditional cakes are typically smaller and less intricately decorated than wedding cakes, while wedding cakes tend to be much more complex. In addition to this, they are frequently intended to serve a greater number of individuals, which necessitates additional time and resources to prepare.  

What Factors Affect the Cost of a Wedding Cake?

Because no two wedding cakes are ever the same, just like no two snowflakes are ever the same, no two wedding cakes are ever guaranteed to cost the same amount of money. The price of the wedding cake is highly variable depending on a variety of criteria, including:

1. Size

The required portion size is one of the most evident elements determining the cost of wedding cakes. A larger cake will require more ingredients, more time to prepare it, a more elaborate design to ensure that it stands upright, and possibly more ornamental embellishments, depending on the style you've chosen. You will need fewer ingredients and less preparation time if you want a smaller cake.

It is also essential to consider the number of people who require it to be served to them. If you require a wedding cake that can feed at least 100 guests, you're looking at a minimum of three to four tiers, which may push the price to a three-layer wedding cake. You'll need to search elsewhere if you're looking for a wedding cake that can feed more than 100 guests. 

2. Design

Although the size of the cake plays a significant role in determining the price, the cake's design will be the single most important aspect in determining how much it will cost you to purchase your wedding cake.

Naked wedding cakes, for instance, can entail considerably less work than fondant and handmade sugar details, which will bring down the price of the cake. Due to the time and effort required to produce rice paper florals, sugar flowers, textured ganache, and hand-painted decorations, the pricing will increase if additional details are included.  

3. Choice of Designer

In the same way that the price of a wedding dress can vary widely from designer to designer, so can the price of a wedding cake. 

A cake maker with a storefront on a high street who has undergone professional training and employs a team of people will likely price significantly less than an amateur baker who loves to bake in their spare time and may use cheaper materials and freeze their cake to make it last longer. The amateur baker will likely charge significantly less than the professional cake maker.  

4. Ingredients

Your wedding cake needs to be high enough to pay the price of the ingredients required to produce it, such as butter, eggs, flour, and sugar. Butter has reached an all-time high price, and it's no secret that eggs are difficult to come by. 

It indicates that the type of cake you and your partner select could cost more money if it requires more materials. A fruit cake packed full of dried fruit or a cake that includes a liquor like rum to provide an extra punch will save you more money because of these additional ingredients. 

The quality of the ingredients used will also influence the price. Cake manufacturers who claim lower prices will need to find a way to save that money somewhere, and the easiest place to cut expenses is on the ingredients. You have a few options if you want to save money on ingredients. You can use baking fat instead of real butter or buy generic versions of popular brands at the store. Both of these options, however, may result in a loss of flavour.  

5. Location of your wedding

There is a significant correlation between the location of your wedding venue and the overall cost of your wedding cake. 

To begin, it is common knowledge that the cost of everything varies substantially from one region of the country to the next, regardless of where you are located. Consider how much more expensive a glass of wine or a pint of beer would be in a large city like London compared to a tiny village in Yorkshire.

The same principle holds when discussing the typical cost of a wedding cake in the United Kingdom. Due to the disparity in the cost of living between the capital of London and the Yorkshire Dales, the price of a show-stopping centrepiece designed specifically for a wedding in the city will be significantly more than the cost of a similar cake designed just for a wedding in the countryside.   

6. Time to Make the Cake

The time required to build a wedding cake can vary, depending on the cake's size and the number of ornamental components included in the process. An old proverb states that time is money. 

The average time is somewhere between 20 and 30 hours. Sometimes, less for more straightforward designs, and sometimes, more for more elaborate designs, such as sugar flower cakes. Making just one sugar flower might take an hour and a half. 

Wedding Cake Cost Guide

How much does a wedding cake cost?

It is one of the most significant customs and certainly one of the most delicious! It is to serve wedding cake at the celebration. But how much does it cost to buy a wedding cake? Although the price of a wedding cake might change based on its size and design, the typical expenditure for a wedding cake in the United States is between $300 and $700, with most couples opting to spend between $300 and $500. You'd be shocked at how much work goes into making a lovely wedding cake, even though this may sound like a lot for a treat. 

Which factors impact wedding cake prices?

It should not come as a surprise that the price of a wedding cake would increase proportionately with the size and level of detail of the cake. A wedding cake with many design elements, such as sugar flowers, fondant details, many tiers, and unusual shapes, would cost more than a simpler cake with traditional buttercream frosting, a few fresh flowers, and fewer tiers. 

Some of the design elements that may be included include sugar flowers, fondant embellishments, many tiers, and distinctive forms. In most cases, the flavour you select won't have any bearing on the cost of your wedding cake, but if you ask for a specific custom flavour, the price of your wedding cake can go up slightly. 

What is the starting price of a wedding cake?

The base cost of a wedding cake can change based on the flavour of icing that the customer wants on their cake. Cakes that are frosted with buttercream, a frosting produced from butter and sugar, typically cost less than cakes coated in fondant, a sugary icing that resembles a paste. Although fondant is more long-lasting than buttercream (and it won't melt in the heat! ), it is often considered to have a lower level of flavour. 

When it comes to wedding cakes, the base price of a buttercream wedding cake is often around $4 per slice, whereas the base price of a fondant wedding cake is typically around $5 per slice. Again, these prices for wedding cakes will differ even more depending on the decorations, size, and other factors. 

What’s included in the cost of a wedding cake?

The answer to this question differs depending on who you ask. The price of your wedding cake will typically include the actual cake and a design consultation during which the baker will develop a unique design for your wedding, a cake tasting, delivery, and set up of the cake at the reception venue. Although you may be required to provide your cake stands, cake toppers, and cutting equipment, certain cake makers will include additional supplies with their cakes. In addition, some of the pricing of wedding cakes include an additional top layer of the couple's wedding cake or an anniversary cake for the couple to share on the first anniversary of their marriageю. 

What types of desserts do wedding cake bakers offer?

Around 54 per cent of married couples at their reception opt to serve a wedding dessert different from the wedding cake, either in place of or in addition to the wedding cake. Cupcakes, cake pops, cookies, pies, pastries, doughnuts, and possibly more are some of the alternative wedding treats that cake bakers may offer. 

The starting price for a cupcake is approximately $3, while the price of a cake pop is approximately $4. Additionally, the custom of providing the groom with a cake is especially prevalent in the South. These groom's cakes have been made in the shape of everything from sports equipment to burritos, and we've seen them all.

When should I hire a wedding cake baker?

We strongly advise choosing a wedding cake baker at least six months before your big day because these vendors tend to get booked quickly. Start by picking a few local bakers to interview after reviewing internet evaluations of wedding cake bakers in your area. Conduct these interviews in person. You will normally select the flavours for your wedding cake during a tasting after you have chosen your baker and before the big day. 

What Impacts The Cost Of A Wedding Cake?

1. Wedding Cake Ingredients

You know the drill: butter, flour, sugar, and eggs, right? Indeed, those are the fundamentals, but even among those, there is a spectrum of quality. If you choose a more luxurious bakery, you may expect their ingredients to be similar. You can begin to see the difference between a wedding cake that costs $100 and one that costs $1,000 after you factor up all of the extras, such as extracts, creams, frosting, and all of the specialised instruments required to make it happen. 

2. Wedding Cake Design

A simple wedding cake with ornate edging is one way to bring down the overall cost of a wedding cake while still maintaining the cake's traditional function. When you add things like pearls, fondant, icing flowers, three-dimensional wafer paper, hand-painted embellishments, and the years of knowledge required to make everything work together, you will rapidly find yourself on the higher end of the price range. 

3. Wedding Cake Tiers

Adding a few levels might not seem like a big deal, but remember that the higher you go, the greater the risk of something going wrong. It is impossible to reproduce the 300-pound wonder that belonged to Queen Victoria without the talented (and pricey) hands of a master. 

4. Wedding Cake Frosting

Five primary varieties of icing are used on wedding cakes: buttercream, meringue, whipped cream, fondant icing, and royal ganache.

Each one calls for a different set of components, and some are more manageable than others. You can, of course, always go for the "naked" appearance, which is becoming more and more fashionable, to cut costs.

5. Wedding Cake Delivery Fees

In most cases, the cost of delivery is not included in the price of the cake. If they have to deliver it across town, choosing the most popular baker in the city will add to the expenses, as the delivery price will be higher than the standard rate. The delivery fee will be higher if they travel across town. Why? They are responsible for ensuring that it maintains its total integrity while keeping it at the appropriate temperature. 

6. Cake Equipment Rentals

If you intend on renting extras like cupcake displays, cake stands, and cake toppers from your baker, the total cost of your wedding will increase. 

Summary

Your wedding cake is likely to be one of the items in your budget that comes at the lowest price. However, even though it is often considered to be one of the more affordable items that you will have at your wedding (in comparison to wedding invitations, wedding venues, and wedding outfits), it may still end up being one of your more expensive items depending on how fancy you make it. What's the rotten news? The price of the typical wedding cake is rising, much like that dough.

We've witnessed an increase of almost 14% in only the past few years. In the year 2021, the typical price of a wedding cake was higher than $450. And that's simply the standard deviation there. A wedding cake may set you back more than $1,000, depending on the decoration style and the size of the cake you order.