I have never done a wedding cake before and am at a loss for what to charge. I will be making a 3 tiered cake, probably 10", 8" and 6" filled with a fruit filling and covered in fondant. The bride wants fondant swags and pearls with calla lilies. She will also be getting enough sheet cakes to serve the remainder of her 250 guests. I was thinking of charging $4.50 per serving for the wedding cake and $1.50 per serving for the sheet cakes. My questions are:
Are these good prices?
How many will each sheet cake serve they are 24"x18" 3 inch high 2-layer filled?
How many will the 10" and 8" serve?
Should I charge extra for the Calla Lilies, they will be gum paste, and if so how much?
I live in California and will be hosting a tasting for the bride tomorrow! Any info would be very appreciated!!!
Please!Please! Please! Help answer my questions! I really need help!
If you're in CA, your pricing is probably fine. You could probably do more like $2.50 for the sheet cakes, too; that's the bare minimum I charge to even basically BC frost any cake.
At 4.50/ea, you're probably fine to include the extra callas etc in the pricing, but if you're making them you could charge $5.00 each or $2.50 for smaller ones. If they are silk or fresh, I usually have the bride either buy and provide them or I buy them and bill her slightly more than retail.
Hope this helps. Wish I could get away with $4.50 a serving! Lucky you! 
Hope your tasting goes well~
For servings, go to earlenescakes.com and check out her cake serving size chart--I like it and it's got some other helpful info on there too. Not sure about the large sheet cakes. I think I figured a 12 x 18 once to feed about 100-110...?
It's very late, so I'm off to bed...or I'd try to find more for ya. toodles
BTW- do you thing $4.50 is too high?
Only if your competitors are charging $3.00. 
I am only half kidding. It is the responsibility of everyone in business for themselves to know what their competitors are charging and what is included in that price. If you haven't already called a handful of competitors, you should.
I am more than willing to give any of my local competitors my pricing information at any time. If they are calling to find out our prices so they can undercut us, sweet. I know from experience that in this business companies come and go and the ones that go first are the ones selling discount wedding cakes. In this biz you can burn out fast, and the burnout comes much quicker when you are making $200 wedding cakes.
If they decide to charge more than I do... Sweet! That means I can start raising my prices too.
Well- I tried that and the only bakery in my area that does similar work is on closed for vacation until July 5th. They are in a town about 30 minutes away. The only places that do wedding cakes in my town are Albertsons, Vons and a small bakery. I have been told that the bakeries cakes in town are not very good. I probably should have called them to find out prices anyway. I can't compete with the grocery chains for price! That is where everyone around here is used to getting cakes. So therefore there isn't much market to compare to.
However, this wedding is down in the San Fernando Valley, not even in my market. I haven't been very succesful at finding contact info for any bakeries down there.
Oh well, the tasting is in about 1 hour, so I will just have to stick to the prices I have. I did change the wedding cake price to $3.50 per serving. Adding $1 per serving for fondant.
Thanks again for all your help!
Just thought I would let you know how this turned out. The bride and her mother loved the tasting and I will be making the wedding cake for August 13th. A 3 tiered wedding cake 10", 8" and 6" rounds the 10" and the 6" will be white cake filled with fresh strawberry filling and white chocolate bavarian creme. the 8" will be chocolate fudge cake filled with mocha buttercream. They will all be covered in white fondant. I will also make 2 sheet cakes, one in each of the above flavors. The cake itself will have a simple pearl border around each tier and a drape of fondant going between each layer. There will be magenta calla lillies and purple lizanthias (spelling?). She also said I could add silver and teal accents as I see fit. I am so excited and so scared!!! I have never done a wedding cake before!
When I gave the mother of the bride the price she had no prolems with it so it must have been okay. I charges $3.50 per serving for the 10" and 8" plus $1 extra per serving for fondant so $4.50 per serving. For the sheet cakes I charged $2.50 per serving.
Thanks for everyones help with the pricing! I am sure I will be on here again soon with questions on the whole wedding cake process!
If you would like a copy of my excel spreadsheet to help me with pricing please email me at [email protected] I ran your initial post into my spreadsheet and I got $461.45 (I would have rounded up to $465).
Glad the bride was happy with what you charged! Eagerly awaiting photos!
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