Two really important facts about cutting your wedding cake!
You don’t need to cut the cake into hundreds of neat portions. Your caterer will do this! The cake-cutting moment, is often just a cermonial “cut”. At most, you’re cutting a couple of peices to feed one another, if that’s the way you want to do it. Please do not worry about cutting it into finger slices. This is a job best done by professionals.
You don’t cut a wedding cake by starting with the knife at the top and cutting aaaalllll the way down through aaaalll the tiers. You can’t! So don’t try.
With that in mind here’s everything ELSE that you need to know about cutting that huge cake!
Cake knife
Really, it’s just a pretty knife. The caterers will use a sharp, serated knife when they portion it all up but for your ceremonial cut, use something pretty. I’ve got one you can hire, your caterer probably will too.
Cake sword?
If you have access to weaponry, I urge you to go for it. Way more fun, great pictures.
Photo credit: Will Patrick Weddings
Which tier do I cut?
Tiered cakes are actually seperate cakes with a cake board under every tier. That means that you physically can’t cut from the top, all the way down to the bottom. The best way is to cut the bottom tier.
If you’ve got a dummy tier at the bottom, just cut the one above.
What are the traditions?
There are loads of different ways of cutting your cake. Most often, all the guests will gather round, and the two of you will hold the knife together and cut. This is a tradition that goes back years.
Some couples cut the cake and feed a slice to one another - this is popular in Indian and American weddings, for example. And Persian weddings have an elaborate knife-dance!
Jen….why are you screaming?
Everyone has their own superstitions with cake - mine is that you absolutely MUST scream when you cut any cake, to let the devils out. As well as having a devil-free cake (better safe than sorry) it also makes your photos more fun, and you can ask the guests to join in, too!
Would it be funny to slam this cake into my beloved’s face?
It’s become a bit of a thing (more in the US/Australia than here but I do have a lot of anglo-american couples) to grind the cake into your new spouse’s face instead of feeding them a bit. Now, [serious face]: please please please have a conversation beforehand, and if your beloved does not want jam and buttercream ruining their make-up/hair/suit then….DO NOT DO IT. It won’t be as funny as you think. I promise you.
Even worse, Tiktok seems to think it’s hilarious to actually slam your new Mr or Mrs face first into the cake. HARD NO. I can’t stress enough that you absolutely MUST NOT DO THIS unless you want to spend the rest of the night in the eye hospital. Wedding cakes contain spikey things like support dowels and cocktail sticks which could really, really injure you. Don’t do it.
