Of all the elements of your wedding day, your cake is one of the most iconic – and the most delicious. Getting the look and flavour of the sponge just right will help to keep your guests happy and ensure your wedding photos look the part.
Like all aspects of a wedding, cakes are affected by trends. For 2020, one of the most prominent trends is the watercolour cake. Giving the sponge a unique aesthetic, and offering couples the chance to really get creative, watercolour cakes are perfect for the Instagram generation. Here are some of our favourite ideas to get you inspired.
What is a watercolour wedding cake?
The only difference between a watercolour cake and a standard wedding cake is the decoration. With watercolour cakes, a baker will use a diluted mix of coloured icing, or edible pigment, to paint the design onto the sponge, using the base icing as a blank canvas. This gives them a huge amount of freedom to flex their creative muscles and allows your baker to create a design that reflects your wedding décor, theme and colour scheme perfectly.
The decoration on watercolour wedding cakes is usually fairly abstract. Wedding cake designers often used washes to build up layers of colour or dilute the pigment to create a faded look.
Alternatively, you can ask your cake maker to use stronger tones to produce a more defined design.
Personalise your cake
As well as using watercolour techniques to decorate your cake, you can use it to personalise your sponge. As @OneFabDay says, “Customise your cake with hand-painted initial illustrations, a scripted quote or even some sweet words that represent you as a couple.” These personal touches will help to make your cake unique and look fantastic in your wedding photos.
When choosing the colours for your cake, try to match them to the colours in your wedding décor. While they don’t have to be exact replicas of the tones in your flowers, table settings or stationery, it’s a good idea if the shades in your icing complement the rest of the colours in the space.
Where to find a watercolour wedding cake
Once you’ve decided a watercolour cake is the right choice for your big day, the next step is to find a baker. As this style of cake becomes increasingly popular, it’s getting easier and easier to find suppliers across the country. Make sure you take a look at your chosen baker’s previous watercolour cakes to ensure you like their style. If they haven’t made one before, ask them to make you a sample cake well in advance of your big day so you can see exactly what you’re getting.
Find more wedding planning tips and ideas by exploring our site or talking to a member of our expert team.
