As far as food is concerned, the more the better – right?
Speaking as someone with a “healthy” appetite, I’d say yes -most of the time. Give me a tasty chicken Madras, with garlic naan and onion bahjees, and I’d happily eat a second helping. Offer me a tomato salad and I wouldn’t even take a bite (tomatoes are awful. Everyone knows this.)
Wedding cakes fall somewhere in between. I’ve yet to meet anyone who likes (and I mean really likes) that sort of brown, stodgy, fruity, mincemeat based doughy stuff which wedding cakes are usually made of. Most people I’ve spoken to just regard it as something for the marzipan and icing to stick to. (Note to self: must remember to develop and market the 100% marzipan and icing wedding cake.)
So all this is leading to the question: why bother with a five-tier wedding cake? Most guests don’t even like the stuff. There is almost always a large pile left at the end of the evening, and even thats after only one or two tiers have been sliced. I know this because our mobile crepe van is frequently hired for evening wedding receptions, so we get to witness a lot of weddings. And a lot of left-over wedding cake.
Now in a straight fight between our crepes and a slice of wedding cake, I’m more than confident there is only going to one winner (come on, naughty nutella pancake vs sensible fruit cake?) but I speak with venue staff and they tell us that it is virtually always the same -wedding cake isn’t the most popular food of the day. It’s more of a traditional thing than a pleasurable thing.
So I would suggest this: opt for something other than a traditional wedding cake. Maybe you think cupcakes have long-since had their day and you don’t fancy a chocolate cake as you’d prefer something a bit more memorable. Explore the options. Consider a cheesecake or even a cheese-cake. Or if you still settle on a traditional wedding cake, cut it down to one or two tiers. You could always use a couple of “dummy” tiers to make it look that bit more impressive, but why waste money on wedding food which no-one will eat?
One thing I would say however is this: wedding cake can be very convenient for mobile catering companies such as ours. We often finish serving crêpes late into the night, at which point we load our mobile crepe station back into our van, usually with a long journey ahead of us. We will often grab a few bites to eat for the journey, whether it be a bacon roll or some pick and mix from the sweet cart. In extreme emergencies we have even been known to grab a slice or two of wedding cake.
Well, someone has to eat it.
