You can use either fresh flowers or sugar flower displays to decorate your wedding cake, and incorporating flowers into your wedding cake design makes it easy for you to complement any floral theme or colour scheme you may be having.
You could choose a plain iced cake and decorate it with an abundance of fresh flowers. However, remember to ask your florist which fresh flowers are best to use on a wedding cake, as some flowers are toxic.
Alternatively, floral displays crafted from sugar will not only create a beautiful and delicately decorated wedding cake, but will also be a talking point for your guests.
Using Sugar Flowers
Roses are the most popular sugar flower for wedding cakes. Each rose is made by hand, petal by petal. They are obviously very time-consuming and therefore come at a cost, but they are certainly worth it for the wow factor. Guests often ask if they are actually real or sugar!
When choosing whether to have real flowers or sugar flowers on your wedding cake it is worth considering whether you would like to keep them after your wedding or not. You can keep a sugar flower posey if it’s created on a removable board by your cake designer and carefully removed by your caterers. Ask your cake designer to provide a separate box so you can easily take them home with you.
Contrary to popular belief, you are not meant to eat sugar flowers. Although made from sugar, when dry they have quite a hard finish and even the strongest of teeth will find their texture a challenge! They really are just a lovely keepsake.
Roses are not the only sugar flower option. Many other beautiful flowers can be made to complement your fresh floral arrangements or chosen theme.
Using Edible Fresh Flowers
Did you know that apart from just looking good, there are many flowers that are edible too? From primroses to lavender, there are a host of edible flowers you can use to add the perfect finishing touch to your wedding cake, either in their natural form or crystallised.
Just as herbs have had an essential place in cookery for hundreds of years, flowers have played their part in the art of cuisine too. It is said that we eat with our eyes, and the exquisite beauty of flowers can tempt our senses before we’ve even taken the first bite!
The rise in popularity of ingredients like micro herbs for the restaurant trade has seen speciality growers supplying this demand. Likewise, flower growers can now cater specifically for the floral needs of the wedding industry, although there are differences in their production for the wholesale flower market.
If you are going to use fresh flowers to decorate your wedding cake you should never buy them from a florist, garden centre or supermarket. These flowers could have been grown with the use of chemicals and pesticides that are not intended for human consumption. Be sure to use flowers grown organically with this specific purpose in mind.
Which Flowers are Edible?
So what flowers can you use to decorate your wedding cake that will not only look good, but be good enough to eat? Here are some of our favourite edible flowers…
- Roses
- Geraniums
- Lavender
- Violets
- Honeysuckle
- Cornflowers
- Sunflowers
- Snapdragons
- Borage
- Primroses
- Pansies
They can be crystallised with sugar to give a look reminiscent of Christmas sweets, or used fresh in whatever way you like, from whole flowers to buds and petals.
Ask your cake designer to include fresh flowers in your wedding cake, and let their natural beauty shine through. You can also use edible flowers at your wedding breakfast.
Guest post by May Clee Cadman of Maisie Fantasie (Overview), Nicola Hall of Hall of Cakes (Sugar Flowers) and Simon Nickell (Fresh Flowers)
Images from…
White Wedding Cake with Fresh Flowers: Lara Hotz Photography
Sugar Flower Images: Hall of Cakes
Cake with Edible Fresh Flowers: Olofson Design
