The Wedding Cake

Your wedding cake is a beautiful piece of art work. Why are you putting it in the corner? Many reception venues often place the cake table in a corner of the room. Why?

If the wedding couple is spending hundreds of dollars on their cake (most cakes do cost hundreds of dollars), then why wouldn't you want to display this beautiful dessert in the middle of the room where everyone can see it? If you went to an Art Gallery and spent hundreds of dollars on a piece of art, you wouldn't hide it in your house, would you? No, you would display it out proudly and call every one's attention to it when they came to visit you. So should be the same for your wedding cake.

Not only is it the dinner's sweet ending, but it symbolizes the beginning of setting up a household between man and wife; the woman serving the man and vice versa. It is rich in tradition and heritage. It is a wedding staple that brings order and richness to a wonderful day. Your parents cut their cake; their parents did it before them just as did your great-grandparents. It is something that everyone looks forward to at the end of a meal and marks the beginning of a life together.

Cutting the cake is so much more at your wedding than just a formation of flour, sugar and eggs. It is a tradition that goes back beyond in centuries of love and families.

The tradition began in ancient Rome. During the wedding ceremony the bride and groom were fed morsels of a wheat biscuit or roll. Symbolizing fertility, the biscuit was then crumbled over the bride’s head. The concept caught on, passed through the centuries, and was adopted by various cultures of the Western world. By the time it reached Elizabethan England, the wheat cake, a symbol of sharing and fertility had become more than just tradition. The Elizabethans stacked the rolls high and placed them on their reception tables as centerpieces, for all their guests to admire and enjoy.

But it took the pastry-loving French to envision that those simple wheat biscuit centerpieces could be held together with sugar frosting. The French turned the wheat rolls into fine-textured cream-filled puffs, stacking them high while holding them in place with sticky, sweet caramel. Later, they used the heavenly wispiness of spun sugar to decorate the golden pastries.

The wedding cake embodies a sense of history, of happiness, fertility, plenty and good luck. It is tradition; give it the respect it deserves.