Cake, cupcakes, pastries??

We chose a small cake just for us for cutting and picture purposes. For guests we are having multiple flavors of cupcakes and cookies. My FMIL and step mom also offered to make all these desserts which is helping us save tremendously!

Thank the Lord for this post!!!!! I was tossing around the idea of cupcakes instead of a huge cake (were expecting around 200 ppl). Now i'm supper excited!!!!! Thank you!!!!

For us, it wasn't a money-saving thing, but rather a don't eat cake thing, but we did doughnuts and mini pies. They went over really well and people were able to choose what they liked.

My FH's aunt works at Mark's Feed Store. We're hoping to get Buttermilk Crunches for our wedding (and cheap bc we know an employee) - so buttermilk pie, caramel, and icecream. Have not priced it out yet. Also considering a cookie cake. (I don't like cake. My mom and I have decorated cakes for years, but I don't like the taste.)

I would say that you should get a cake if it's really important to hubby, and do something different if it's not. Do whatever makes you happy, and then find a way to do it under budget. Maybe that means getting a little fancy cake and a big not-fancy sheet cake from the baker or supermarket for everyone else (also, you can pre-cut it and not pay a cutting fee to your venue). Maybe that means getting an undecorated cake and putting extra flowers from your florist on it. Maybe that means making a macaroon or cookie tree instead of a cake, or doing icecream, or punch, or pie, a cotton candy machine, or even homemade treats.

You can make your own wedding cake; it's not actually that hard. Infinity cakes are ridiculously easy to make. You basically just bake a cake, and then pour glaze over it. You could easily make your own infinity cake in half an hour. There are tutorials all over Pinterest.

A little-known fact: you can freeze any baked good, and it will stay fresh. Actually, when my mom decorates cakes, she freezes the cake part anyways before she ices it, because it makes it WAY easier. I did all of my KY State Fair baking 2 weeks in advance and froze it, and still got blue ribbons. I personally think that the food lost a little flavor after 3 days, but no one else noticed. So if you're up to it, you can bake, freeze, decorate, and re-freeze your wedding cake until your wedding, and have plenty of time to figure out how to get it right.

Even traditional wedding cakes aren't that hard if you do a smooth icing all over, and add on store-bought sugar flowers or real flowers and ribbon. You will have to go to a cake decorating shop (not Hobby Lobby). The majority of the fancy decorations like sugar roses, edible bells, and such can be store-bought for a couple of dollars each. You legitimately just sit those things on top of the cake, or glue them on with a dollop of icing. The topper is cheap - $3-$30 dollars. Optionally, borders can be done with a normal star tip (shell borders are really forgiving, and easy to learn, too) or fancy stuff can be done with a ribbon tip and a leaf tip, round tip if you want little pearls, vines, or writing. Legit - only three or four icing tips to decorate a wedding cake. Really the only two hard parts are getting the icing smooth and using dowell rods to support cakes with more than two layers. If you stick to two layers, you don't need dowell rods. Use icing bought from the cake decorating store, and add in a little artificial flavoring. You can't go wrong with regular Pillsbury cake mix; omit egg yolk for truly white cake, and grease and flour the pan for a perfectly-shaped cake. Use a cake leveler if you have one, or just a knife will do fine. With a lazy susan, you can rotate the cake as you smooth the icing and/or decorate. Just trust me and buy sugar roses; don't try to ice them yourself. All of that takes some practice, but you have time - and you can totally freeze it when you are done, and it will keep. It IS worth it to buy the expensive box from the cake store. Transport is the one other difficulty with DIY.

To clarify, I don't want to trash Hobby Lobby - you should definitely get your icing tips from there; but cake shops stock all of the hyper-real sugar flowers that bakers use. Honestly, if you are getting a plain cake with sugar flowers, your baker is probably screwing you over on price. Those flowers are $1-$6 each, and everyone just buys them from the cake supply. A monkey can sit fake flowers on a smooth cake. They also stock the big cake boxes for transport and the fancy knives for cake cutting.

We did a cake, but a smaller 2 tier one for display. Our baker is making a sheet cake to make up for the additional servings. This saved us at least $200 on our cake.

Oh my gosh! I saw a picture of this online, and we were considering something very similar before we totally nixed the idea of a cake. It's beautiful. How much did your baker end up charging you? I am interested to know, because this is a very simple cake to decorate, and one OP could do herself if she felt so inclined.

First I tried making my own cake. Not worth it. haha

Mom had to have a cake so I'm getting a small one and then there will be an assortment of cookies and brownies.

Maybe just get a little cake for you to cut (or save) and then something cheaper that you love (donuts, cookies, smores bar, rice crispy treats, etc.)

We were going to do cupcakes with a small cake for FH and I to cut. But then after more thought (and looking at prices) we decided against it, mainly because that's a lot of icing to be sitting out in the heat of August. We finally landed on cake squares because the lady doing our cake offers a great price for them, and they are already pre-cut and ready to pick up and eat. One thing my venue also suggested is getting a small nice pretty cake and then buying sheet cakes that they can pre-cut and serve. She said they do that all the time and people don't even realize it's sheet cake.