4 Ways to Serve Wedding Cake
Serve as the Final Course:
Essentially, there are four ways to serve your wedding cake at your wedding reception. The first way is the most traditional way; final course service. We're seeing less and less couples choosing this service style. Final course service is serving your cake as the last course to your wedding reception dinner before the dance floor opens. After you have the entrees served and cleared, the servers immediately deliver the cake to your guests as the final course, otherwise known as the dessert course. The "pro" to this is everyone sits and enjoys the cake and you can do some of the final protocols like the parent dances while everyone enjoys the cake. The "con" to this is, that if your wedding dinner has been quite long because of extended introductions and speeches, your guests may be anxious to get on the dance floor and tired of waiting.
Dance Break Dessert:
The second way and most popular at this time, is to serve the cake at each guest's place setting, while they're already on the dance floor. When guests take a break from dancing, it's sitting there ready for them. The pros to this are you get to hit the dance floor sooner. The cons are, if you've got a great band or DJ, they may never go back to their seats to eat their cake, therefore, they will walk away saying, "I wonder whatever happened to the cake?" Or they're walking around the room on the way out and they're like, "Look at all this wasted cake." Even worse, the cake that sits on your guests tables for an hour and is dried out by the time they sit for a break. This, I think, is the number one reason people are straying from ordering wedding cakes in general and going to mini desserts on display. But I think if you were to go back to the more traditional way, you would see that people really do love wedding cake.
Display the Sliced Cake:
The third way to provide wedding cake to your guests is by putting the plated cake slices on display. The best place that you can put the sliced cake is on a beautiful display near the bar. Why? Because everyone hits the bar at some point during the evening. So, while they're waiting they'll say, "Hey, there's the cake." , grab a slice and eat it either in your lounge area or at their table. A bonus to this is if you've got several flavors to choose from in your wedding cake, they have the option of choosing which flavor they'd like to taste. Better yet, have the slices cut small enough so they can choose multiple flavors to enjoy.
Wandering Waiter (butler passed):
Finally, and the most new and trending cake delivery, are wandering waiters or butler style cake, meaning that the servers come around with trays full of cake in small vessels. Something smaller like a shot glass, or a little cup with a small fork in it. They can just wander around and offer to anyone who's maybe at the bar, at the photo booth, in your lounge area, out on the dance floor (so long as it's not a glass vessel). What's great about this idea is that they can wander throughout the evening to offer it. There's less opportunity for your delicious cake to get missed. With this method, everyone who actually wants it is going to take it.
So, those are the four ways that you can invite everyone to enjoy wedding cake at your wedding. Lexie from Sweetified Cakes and I had a lovely chat about all things cake on my IGTV. Around the 17:14 timestamp, you can hear more straight from the expert on the anatomy of a wedding cake. If you are a visual person, the graphic below may be helpful.
