Is this normal for wedding cakes? - Page 2

There is nothing wrong with multiple flavors. Guests love the choices.

This is a good thread because we are all now on notice to aprise the bride to make sure that the venue offers the guests their choice. They can serve it or have guests walk up, but it is the guest's choice.

A friend of mine sent me the link to your cake because it was different, and beautiful. And then we thought about all the choices.

My friend was asking: "funfetti for a wedding?" and I said maybe that flavor was for the young guests and children. I would have probably wanted funfetti even though I'm old. It's sad that guests were not allowed to choose. I hate chocolate cake for example.

Me too. I am not a chocolate cake person AT ALL. I might enjoy a piece of Toblerone or a chunk of a Milka bar from time to time, but that is it. I guess I am in the minority when it comes to chocolate.

But yes, the last few weddings I have been to have been very disappointing with the cake cutting. I think it's a time thing (faster to just cut through one tier and serve). Before we got married the girl at the hotel with whom we were coordinating told me that they just cut and serve because it's faster. I said um, no. I wanted all the tiers to be cut so people could have a choice. She kind of had an attitude but that's what I wanted. I don't believe in cake communism. And if that weren't bad enough, the hotel tried to steal my leftover cake.

I know it sounds like the caterer was a big meanie, but they did just what they were supposed to. And no, they don't go around asking which guest wants what flavor of cake and no, they aren't going to start doing that. How would you propose they keep track of that the day of? Do you expect the caterer to scramble around to get everyone's cake order? An 8" round still only has 24 servings. So what about the other 278 guests? What if they ALL want that flavor? How should the caterer decide which 24 lucky people get the flavor they ask for? Then they have to go back to the guests who didn't get what they want and ask them for their second or third choice?

Completely impractical and will never happen.

Think about it, even if you live in an area that has room to cut up 300 servings of cake (you said 8 tiers, right??? That's a ton of cake!) and put them on tables for everyone to grab, how would you even calculate how many servings you need then? If you let people serve themselves, and you have 7 flavors out, I guarantee you there will be people that will grab all seven. So what of the guests who didn't get any cake because they were too slow to the cake buffet? And nobody eats 7 slices of cake -- think of all the 1/2 eaten slices of cake because people took more then their share just so they can taste each flavor?

This is exactly why I don't do different flavors per tier, even though every single wedding I've done they initially ask for it. If someone is insisting on having different flavors per tier I suggest getting cupcakes or a dessert buffet.

I was the cake decorator and a guest at a wedding last April. It was 3 different flavors. The staff cut the slices and placed several of each slice on a serving tray and went from table to table asking guests for their choices. If the server ran out of a flavor that someone wanted to try, the server would either bring one back to the table or let the guest know that there were no more slices of that flavor.

I think it all depends on the venue, and the bride should speak to the coordinator to voice her opinions if there are multiple flavors.

I give my brides a choice of flavors. If they have an 8 tier cake they can have 8 flavors! Their day, their choice!

Well first, I should say I personally don't get why anyone would want that many flavors of cake in one cake. It's not like the bride is going to get 8 pieces of cake either - she is lucky if she even eats one! LOL, I know I didn't eat a piece of my own cake - I was too busy greeting everyone and I was completely shell shocked. Anyway, no matter how it's handled, I don't think offering people a choice is crowd pleasing situation unless you have infinite amounts of a thing so that everyone gets 100% what they want.

Your idea above seems like a great solution, but if I was your caterer and you wanted me to do that, I'd be charging you an even greater cake cutting fee and a PIMA factor. Something that should only take me 20 minutes to cut and plate and another 10 for the wait staff to serve you are now turning into an hour-long (or more) ordeal, cutting into the flow of the event, extending the time at the venue, as well as the time I have to pay my staff -because instead of having 2 people serve cake to the tables I now need 10 in order to cover the room by next Tuesday... and guests are still going to get irritated that they didn't get what THEY wanted when that person over there DID get what they want. Again, different sized tiers yield different servings of cake, so whatever lucky side of the room we start on is going to get the greatest choice - by the time we get to the end, guess what? The guests are getting one flavor of cake because that's all that is left.

I don't know about everyone else, but I have lost out on doing cakes because the venue's cake cutting fee was astronomical, forcing the bride to get a cheaper cake so she could have cake at all. If those fees get even higher because someone wants to have a ridiculous cake buffet and have the wait staff run around for an hour trying to accommodate every guest's whim, none of us would have commissions.

I am totally in the minority with this and maybe it's a regional thing - all the other cake artists in my area will make as many flavors of cake as is requested. But I've also been told that stuff like this is exactly why caterers are trying to push brides to get sheet cakes - you know, the annoying fad that won't seem to die and is taking money out of all of our pockets and turning us into glorified Costcos? The caterers can care less about the price difference, they just know that sheets yield the same amount of servings per flavor and they are much faster and easier to cut then a tiered cake. Oh, they'll still charge the same cake cutting fee, but WE are expected to discount because "it's just a sheet cake".

Sometimes unexpected consequences arise out of seemingly innocent circumstances.

When I deliver a cake I always drop off a list of the tier sizes and cake flavor/filling. I do this even if the entire cake is the same flavor/filling. My yellow cake and champagne cake look the same but taste quite different. There is no way a venue would know that the cake they are cutting is champagne and not yellow. I think a list is always needed.

Plus, in the case of multiple flavor/fillings the staff knows what to tell guests when they ask.

I had a wedding last weekend and the bride had 3 different cake flavors and 3 different fillings. I dropped my list off with a staff member and she said "oh, great...more than 1 option. This makes it really hard to cut and serve in a timely manner because people keep asking questions and stopping servers to switch a piece of cake they already have for another flavor".

I like offering choices, but I can see how this could be annoying the person that has to cut and serve the cake.

We had individual cakes at our wedding. Each guests received a 4" x 4" x 4" square cake. When the guest RSVP for the entree they wanted, they also RSVP for the cake flavor/filling they wanted. So everyone got what they wanted and no one had to worry about cutting the cake, passing the cake out or cake drying out.