DIY Wedding cupcakes and cake

Knottie66910870

My fiancé and I have decided we are going to make our own wedding cupcakes and cake. We did our research and we think that we can pull it off. We are enjoying the projects we have chosen to DIY for our event. We want to give our day a personal touch and feel that this will make it memorable. It is also a cost saving for us. Has anyone else decided to make their own cake/cupcakes for their wedding? I would love to hear your experiences, both good and bad! I will post pics after my wedding!,

esstee33

Knottie66910870 said:

My fiancé and I have decided we are going to make our own wedding cupcakes and cake. We did our research and we think that we can pull it off. We are enjoying the projects we have chosen to DIY for our event. We want to give our day a personal touch and feel that this will make it memorable. It is also a cost saving for us. Has anyone else decided to make their own cake/cupcakes for their wedding? I would love to hear your experiences, both good and bad! I will post pics after my wedding!,

This is probably going to depend immensely on how many guests you have. Making cupcakes or cakes for 50 people would be a vastly different undertaking than making them for 200! 

That said, I probably wouldn't. I have a friend who makes cupcakes for weddings, and she has all the top-of-the-line stuff for this (it's her side business and they remodeled their kitchen JUST for this) and it still takes her multiple days to get a wedding order together. You're going to be SO SO SO busy in the days leading up to your wedding. Is this really one more thing you want to worry about? 

MobKaz

I agree with @esstee33.  To add to her points, even if you make the base cupcake ahead of time and freeze, you need to find/have the proper storage for them.  Depending on the time of year your wedding is, frosting the cupcakes could be difficult because of heat and/or humidity.  Finally, you need to be able to safely transport them all to the venue, as well as set them up.

I am all for DIY projects, but anything that requires last minute attention and timing is not worth the cost in stress.

kmmssg

Does your venue allow for homemade food (not made in a commercially licensed kitchen)?  Several years ago a knottie didn't check that out and ended up with no wedding cake.

Her g'ma made ALL the family wedding cakes so they her make their cake too.  When g'ma got to the venue they would not allow her cake inside because it was not made in a licensed commercial facility and they were not going to take on the liability of any food poisoning outside of their own food.  I found that caveat in many of the venues we looked at when our daughters were getting married.

Knottie66910870

Hi Everyone,

thank you for the feedback! Appreciated.

blabla89

I'm going to make a little two-tier cake for us to cut, but we're buying sheet cakes to serve the guests. Making a whole wedding cake is just too much for me to do, and the sheet cakes will probably taste better anyway.

southernbelle0915

I made the cake for our wedding. I made it a couple days ahead of time, brushed it with simple syrup to keep it moist, wrapped it in saran wrap and put it in the fridge. The next day I frosted it, laid the fondant, and decorated it.

To transport to the venue, I went to a cake store and bought specialty containers. Each tier had its own container. Then once at the venue, it took 5 minutes to stack the tiers and put some fresh flowers on it - the fresh flowers helped conceal any screw ups or dents in the fondant.

I have no idea how to do cupcakes though... That's probably not something I would take on just because they're individual and I'd be a lot more nervous about transporting them.

jacques27

1. Do you bake regularly? 
2. Do you decorate your baked goods?
3. Do you have methods of transporting these baked goods?

It's hard.  I routinely bake cupcakes for events.  Unless you're just making boxed mix cupcakes, it may not actually be that much cheaper (depending on how many you need and whether you have a fully stocked kitchen to begin with).  You also need somewhere reasonably cool to store them and will need to purchase boxes, too, in order to transport them. 

Admittedly, all of my cupcakes are fully from scratch and vegan (although I contend that soy milk and vegan margarine in some cases are cheaper than their dairy counterparts - the cost of dairy has gone up dramatically).  The last event I did was nine dozen cupcakes in three flavors, in fairly nice liners purchased from a craft store and nicely decorated (nothing too elaborate, though the chocolate ones were piped to look like sunflowers, but the remainder were just your basic cupcake swirl).  It took me ALL DAY and I was sweating and exhausted by the end.  I'm sure a commercial kitchen can bust out nine dozen in no time, but not my little home kitchen.  I'm not saying this can't be done, but please be aware of the time commitment and all of the other things you need to be taking care of last minute that may make this a more hectic project than you imagined.  It's not like you can make these at your leisure months in advance like making your own invitations or centerpieces.

hellosweetie1015

PPs are right - check with your venue to make sure it's even allowed, and be prepared for a lot of work right before the wedding.

That being said - I totally intend to make the cake(s) for our wedding if we get a venue that will allow it. I bake pretty often, and I'm practicing often with pastry tips and such to try and be sure I can do what I want to do. 

Hopefully it'll work out where I can; I know what I'm making so I'm excited.

atlastmrsg

I bake all the time and have lots of nice equipment for a home chef--the big Kitchenaid stand mixer, pastry bags and tips, etc.--but there's no way I'd have done it for my own wedding.  I wouldn't have wanted one additional thing to worry about while trying to entertain people from out of town and deal with other little things that came up.  Also, transporting 120 cupcakes would've been a PITA.

For me, some things are worth paying for to make life easier.  This was one of them.  Kind of like pizza delivery when it snows.

ohannabelle

jacques27 said:

1. Do you bake regularly? 
2. Do you decorate your baked goods?
3. Do you have methods of transporting these baked goods?

It's hard.  I routinely bake cupcakes for events.  Unless you're just making boxed mix cupcakes, it may not actually be that much cheaper (depending on how many you need and whether you have a fully stocked kitchen to begin with).  You also need somewhere reasonably cool to store them and will need to purchase boxes, too, in order to transport them. 

Admittedly, all of my cupcakes are fully from scratch and vegan (although I contend that soy milk and vegan margarine in some cases are cheaper than their dairy counterparts - the cost of dairy has gone up dramatically).  The last event I did was nine dozen cupcakes in three flavors, in fairly nice liners purchased from a craft store and nicely decorated (nothing too elaborate, though the chocolate ones were piped to look like sunflowers, but the remainder were just your basic cupcake swirl).  It took me ALL DAY and I was sweating and exhausted by the end.  I'm sure a commercial kitchen can bust out nine dozen in no time, but not my little home kitchen.  I'm not saying this can't be done, but please be aware of the time commitment and all of the other things you need to be taking care of last minute that may make this a more hectic project than you imagined.  It's not like you can make these at your leisure months in advance like making your own invitations or centerpieces.

Great minds think alike, again. So, all of that ^ up there.

Especially this: 

1. Do you bake regularly?  
2. Do you decorate your baked goods?
3. Do you have methods of transporting these baked goods?

To the first two, I could confidently answer yes, with bells on. Because of this, I wouldn't even attempt to do this for my own event.

Frosting is a really sneaky bastard. Some days, I do some truly lovely things. But there are also the days that everything just seems to not work. Epic frosting failures.

I made 95 decorated cupcakes when my Grandma turned 95. I told her when she turns 100, I'm buying a big effing cake, because it was just too much, even with years of not professional, but a good damned amount of baking and decorating experience behind me. 

Things went wrong that I didn't expect to go wrong, even with the actual cupcakes all ready baked and frozen, and it was unexpectedly the hottest week of the year, and there were missing cupcakes (thank you, youngest child) and no air conditioning and frosting that just would not behave and things had to be scrapped and started over from scratch, and twice the time/cost buying powdered sugar at 11pm and back again for more butter at 1AM and back to the 90 degree kitchen and I was a wreck. Barely slept.

And this was just a birthday party. 

Cute as all hell, eventually, but I was exhausted and frazzled and looked it. And my mother the smart ass said, "Did you know you can pay people to do that?" 

She is wise, and knows many things. 

kinney0515

We are doing the same! My mother in law has done a bunch of cake making and decorating classes in the past- and so it's something we're going to try to cut a corner on.  She's technically the one making it for us.  We are going to go with a very very simple white frosting look (non-fondant) as she thinks that looks easy enough and since we're only having 50-60 people- we don't need too large of a cake.  Then we'll just add a little baby's breath to the top and voila! We want the look very similar to this cake- without the wooden letters.

http://www.pinterest.com/pin/29977153746012198/

Knottie66910870

Thank you to each of you for your comments! My fiancé and I appreciate your feedback! I think we have decided that we will order the cupcakes and have a small cutting cake at the top! I am impressed by those of you who are doing it yourselves or with some family help!, We are having a very small wedding - 35 to 45 of our closest friends and immediate family - and even though it is small, we want to enjoy our day without any stress. (This is a second marriage for both of us). I wish all of you the best and thanks again!

amstecker

I like the idea of a small cutting cake, then even a couple sheet cakes from Costco

wandajune6

amstecker said:

I like the idea of a small cutting cake, then even a couple sheet cakes from Costco

That's pretty much what we did. Our cutting cake gave about 50 chunks of cake (the traditional slices are too small for cake lovers!) so we got that and costco cakes so people could eat as much as they like.

tcnoble

wandajune6 said:

I like the idea of a small cutting cake, then even a couple sheet cakes from Costco

That's pretty much what we did. Our cutting cake gave about 50 chunks of cake (the traditional slices are too small for cake lovers!) so we got that and costco cakes so people could eat as much as they like.

We always have Costco cakes at work for showers... Their cakes are freaking delicious!!!

blabla89

tcnoble said:

wandajune6 said:

I like the idea of a small cutting cake, then even a couple sheet cakes from Costco

That's pretty much what we did. Our cutting cake gave about 50 chunks of cake (the traditional slices are too small for cake lovers!) so we got that and costco cakes so people could eat as much as they like.

We always have Costco cakes at work for showers... Their cakes are freaking delicious!!!

Like I said, our costco sheet cakes will taste better than whatever I bake