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Timing
Three to six months before your wedding day.

What the baker does
Your baker will custom-design a wedding cake using your dress, bouquet, and colours as inspiration. The cake can be real, in any flavour you want, or you can rent a Styrofoam cake from the baker and then have individual, wrapped pieces of real cake for the guests to take away. Many bakers have cake ornaments for sale or rent, as well as a large selection of bombonieres. Most bakers will deliver the cake to your reception site.

How to work with them
Make an appointment to choose a type of cake. If you want it custom-designed to co-ordinate with the decor of your wedding, bring colour samples, a swatch of fabric from your gown or your attendants' dresses, a copy of your invitation, or anything else you would like the cake fashioned after. Tell the baker what time you'd like the cake delivered to the reception, or make arrangements to have it picked up.

Wedding Etiquette - The Cake

The cake is traditionally cut after the speeches and concludes the formal part of the wedding. The bride and groom cut the cake and then it is taken away to be portioned and served. Usually people opt for a tiered fruit cake with royal icing. The top layer is supposed to be kept as a christening cake for the first child. (Remove the icing and keep in an airtight tin. Don't wait 10 years to have children!)

Many bakeries will make sponge cakes (which don't keep for years) or even gateaux. You could opt for covering one of these in royal icing for a traditional look but without the fruit cake. French weddings have the croquemboche, a mountain of profiteroles, which might make a welcome change for your guests. You might like to ask the photographer to take a photograph of you cutting the cake but this may change when you do this as some photographers are unwilling to stay through the reception.