Fresh Flowers for Wedding Cakes

Fresh Carnations featured in Martha Stewart Weddings

The clean elegance of many of our wedding cake designs are perfect for decorating with fresh flowers, and it's once again becoming a popular thing to do, even in the most elegant of settings.

Fresh flowers were a super popular thing years ago when there were few people with the skills and talents to make sugar flowers. From casual garden weddings to even the swankiest of events in grand hotels- flowers were the best fall back when a bride didn't want gobs of icing swirls and flounces.

Overwhelming

Working with fresh flowers on cakes can have its challenges- but if you take the time to think things through properly, you can avoid the pitfalls.

The first concern when working with fresh flowers is scale. Though a oversized luscious bloom can look stunning as an accent on a cake- when trying to make arrangements of flower groups, you need to keep this aspect in mind. Depending on the dimensions of the layers, the available "shelf" space may vary. If not careful, the flowers can look perched and teetering on the edge of a cake and can even weigh too heavily and cause damage to the layers.

An example of the flowers overwhelming the design

A cake that has elegance and grace will always look better in the end.

Our Ribbon Band Cake with a balance of flowers

Take time with your florist or the baker to discuss exactly how you want the balance to be on the cake, and then make sure there are adequate flowers to do so. A wedding cake can require more flowers than you might imagine, and you want each bloom to be perfect, so it's wise to err on the side of having too many to work with than trying to make some saggy blooms stretch.

                          

                                                Our Pearl Dot Cake in fondant with soft groups of flowers

Another question to address is who is going to do the actual decorating. Will it be the cake baker? or the florist? A friend? A good chat between the florist and the cake baker is a good idea, to be sure that everyone is in cahoots.

Avoid blooms that can have milky stems that will seep into your cake, and also consider the scent.  There are some flowers that can leave a musky smell, and even some that can leave guests with some tummy trouble. Take a little time to research which are best for you to use.

Sometimes the discussion of pesticides being transferred to a cake comes up. Just be sure that the flowers are rinsed well before placing on the cake- even if there is some residue, the exposure is minimal. If this is something you are still concerned about, a small nosegay can be created for the top and blooms nestled along the bottom like in the cake above, which limits the amount of direct contact of the petals to the icing.

Decorating your cake with fresh flowers may have a few concerns to think about, but we are here to help. Please feel free to phone us at 917 499 2030, or leave a comment on your order form for us to contact you, and we would be happy to help you design the perfect balance for your A Simple Cake.