Wedding Cake without Tasting?

I think that's the risk you take when you decide to have a destination wedding. I would look into reviews and call the bakery to talk to someone, but I wouldn't expect them to overnight (extremely expensive) samples to my front door. What did you do about a tasting with your caterer?

I enjoyed all the cake tastings I scheduled. The thing that made the difference for me wasn’t the taste, it was the communication, price, and design.

Well, at least in my country, cake tastings don't exist. So you always end up buying a cake and hoping for the best. The reputation of the baker and reviews from past clients are your best shots here.

If you're really worried about the taste, I'd consider visiting your location before the wedding to do a couple of cake tastings (and maybe meet with a few of your other vendors while you're out there). But generally I do think you can trust great reviews. If hundreds of people said the cake tastes amazing, I wouldn't sweat it - your cake will taste great too.

I booked my baker without cake tasting. Cake is probably the lowest priority thing on my list though so I went with someone who had a good reputation (everyone says her cakes are delicious) and was a good price. I will probably only eat the bite FH and I share when we cut it lol

I think that just comes with having a destination wedding. From reading these forums, it sounds like most couples try to take at least one trip to the destination while they are planning so they can meet people, do tastings, etc. However, I don't think it's weird if they won't ship. Honestly, if a place has great reviews, I'd probably just take a leap of faith and order without tasting. If the cake ends up being the worst thing about your wedding, thats still a dang good wedding.

We eloped abroad and didn’t have tastings for anything prior to our wedding. Our food and cake were AMAZING. Better than I could’ve ever hoped it would be.

I will say that I did have a wedding planner who basically picked where we were getting the food and cake from, so I trusted his opinion since I couldn’t be there to try it out first. But if I were you I think your best bet is to go off of the reviews you see online. Good luck!

Our wedding is out of state too and luckily, we had a vacation pre-planned there last year so we set some time for wedding stuff since it kind of started to come together when there.

I will tell you that you are taking a risk. The place I decided on had great reviews! I set up a tasting, told them what flavors we were interested in, and went. The place was really nice, but had some a little fly problem. That was not a huge deal to me, but they had cupcakes as samples and I found them to be dense (no one else seemed to care about this). I do not like dense cake and it is why I stay away from cupcake shops. We left and I was panicking so I reached out to our wedding coordinator and asked her for last minute bakery suggestions. She gave me a few and I went to emailing them all. One bakery said they did not have any appointments left and then they were closing for the holiday, but would not mind putting together a sample box for us. We picked it up and I liked that cake much better so we went with them!

I would suggest to try your best to visit the bakery or ask people/other vendors what they thought of the cake and to ask the questions that you are looking for in a cake.

I would be extremely uncomfortable and worried. I'm planning only 2.5hrs away from where my wedding will be. I had to reschedule my cake tasting twice before I just cancelled because our dates weren't working out. I finally called back when I had a solid date, which is next Saturday.

I would check your calendars and see when a good day would be to schedule your cake tasting(s) rather than ordering without trying. Do you have anyone who lives nearby who could possibly pick up a few baked goods and give you their comments?