Summer of 2022 is here, and weddings are back! This is exciting for so many reasons. We’re out there with the best of them doing our boot-scootin’ boogie on the dance floor, celebrating love and matrimony, toasting to the happy couple, and of course last but certainly not least enjoying all of the wedding cake we can!
It’s been a minute since we last talked about Wedding Cake Trends. Two years ago, we were coming off the heels of our first summer of a global pandemic. We were all learning together how to celebrate and gather safely. Wedding trends included a lot of pivoting, eloping, postponing, and downsizing guest lists to backyard weddings.
While we can’t make up for it, we also can’t go without recognizing that being engaged and planning a wedding in the middle of COVID came with a lot of hearts broken over perfect wedding days that never came to be. Brides who never got the chance to walk down the aisle in their dream dress. Grooms who missed the chance to smash that cake in their newlywed’s face. If you had to skip your dream wedding due to the pandemic, our hearts break for you, too. We see you.
We definitely can’t change the past or you know…the world, but our superpower for making the things a little bit better is that sweet, frosted, melt-in-your mouth, but almost too pretty to eat thing we all love called cake. So, whether you’re finally planning your wedding reception to celebrate a 2020 elopement, or it’s time for your big 2022 or 2023 wedding, let’s dive into some of the biggest wedding cake trends for this year!
Big Cakes
Weddings are not the only things making a big comeback, wedding cakes are too, literally! Couples have waited two long years, (or longer!) to make this whole marriage thing official. So, they aren’t skimping. When guests walk into that reception hall, jaws are dropping at the size of these 4-5 tier cakes! We’re talking people-sized cakes! We need a team of professionals, ladders, and specialty equipment like PVC pillars, Styrofoam and boba straws to assemble them (and that’s not just because Team Sweet is also Team Short). These cakes are anywhere from 2.5 feet to 5 feet tall! Assembling these beautiful behemoths on site takes only takes about an hour to put together. That of course doesn’t include the time it takes us in the bakery to bake and decorate them, though.
The hard work to create these giant works of wedding cake art is so worth it! When our clients see their visions come to life, we can’t get enough of the grins and gasps. With the average guest count around 160 these days, wedding planners and couples love the ability to offer different flavors, with each tier and there’s never a concern about running out of cake. Not to mention, just look at how pretty…and we all collectively say, “awwww!”
Semi-Naked is a Top Trending Design
No matter how many tiers you decide to go with, the most requested cake design we’ve been getting over the past few months is the semi-naked cake. The thing that we love the most about this cake is that, like a great outfit, it can be dressed up or dressed down. You can make a semi-naked cake work perfectly for a buttoned-up classy & elegant wedding just as well as you can a more laidback or rustic wedding.
A semi-naked wedding cake design has a thin frosting layer on the exterior of the cake. The frosting is applied just so that it looks beautiful while still protecting the cake to retain that soft, perfect amount of moisture in every bite. Each cake is made in three layers, with two layers of filling and three layers of cake. The outside frosting is classic vanilla, and you pick the filling and the cake flavors! We can send a cake tasting kit right to your door if you’re not sure which flavors you want.
To mix things up and make it your own, we can add coordinating flowers or greenery to match your wedding colors, and of course a fun or sentimental cake topper of your choosing. The possibilities or endless. This is where the semi-naked design really shines. With such a modest, blank canvas as the base, the accents are really where this cake can show off each couple’s unique personality while still not going overboard and upsetting that one traditional great aunt who wants everything to be old school. The semi-naked cake makes for an adorable tiny single tier cake or you can go big with a multi-tier cake.
Boho Cake Design is a Fun New Trend
The latest new design that we’ve been absolutely loving is the boho cake design, sometimes called the boho chic design. More and more weddings are leaning toward a natural, eclectic bohemian style wedding theme for the 2022 and 2023 season and we are here for it! These cakes incorporate gold flakes, which we will never say no to. They also have lots of neutral color florals and a vintage-y, woodsy feeling to the overall design. Think about those pictures you’ve seen when color photography was just starting to become a thing. Are you picturing your most free-spirited, nature-loving, but stylish and cool grandparents who had gorgeous wedding photos? Perfect. They were trend-setters and they didn’t even know it.
The best part about a boho wedding cake is that, just like a semi-naked cake, the accents are what really make the cake. We can do a facet cake, a semi-naked, a deckle-edge or even a smooth frosted or watercolor cake (that’s the one we put the gold flakes in!) and still make it a boho cake. Choose your number of tiers, too. This best of both worlds design means that you have even more customization options to make that one-of-a-kind wedding cake of your dreams! We especially love the way the boho cake design pairs nicely with some of the venues here in Phoenix in our beautiful desert settings, like the Willow AZ.
The Birchwood Cake Design
An oldie, but a goodie - the birchwood wedding cake has been a top wedding cake trend that’s stuck around for a few years, and we don’t see it going away anytime soon. Couples love this rustic design almost as much as we love cake, and that’s a lot! The birchwood design is also known as the “tree cake design” and is great for those barn weddings, or any open outdoor spaces, forests, or cottage-type weddings.
Just like all our wedding cakes, the birchwood cake has our classic vanilla frosting on the outside and is made with three layers of cake and two layers of filling on the inside. You pick the cake and filling layers! We can make a small, birchwood cutting cake or keep up with all the wedding trends and make it a 4-5 tier birchwood cake. We’ll add the florals and topper of your choosing. Lastly, because what tree would be complete without it? We’ll carve the happy couple’s initials into the side of the cake with a sweet heart around them.
Trending Wedding Cake Colors
Not into the traditional classic vanilla, white wedding cake? We get that. We definitely love making the gorgeous white wedding cakes that every mother of the bride will approve of (and not balk at writing the check for). But we also can’t deny that we get a big grin on our faces when that call comes in from a couple who says, “I want to do something different.” Our creative juices start flowing! We LOVE thinking outside of the box and challenging ourselves to design something new and exciting for your big day.
So, if you’re thinking of doing something a bit different, we’ve got you covered. We can work together to design a beautiful wedding cake for you that will incorporate trending colors, but still scream YOU! Some of the most popular colors we’ve seen are pastels, blush pinks, navy blues, burgundy reds, dusty anything – dusty rose, dusty, oranges, dusty blues, ivory (that’s not white, right?), and champagne. We can bring these colors into the frosting just a little or a lot. We can use these in the flowers or the cake topper. If you want color, let’s chat!
Playful Cake Toppers
I think the further we get into the 2020s the more people in general are feeling an overall attitude of, “let’s not take things so seriously”. Life is hard. Planning a wedding is hard. Planning a wedding twice is just dumb. Let’s have a little fun. Sure, there will always be the couples who love the perfectly adorable newlywed figures on top of the cake in their wedding attire. We love those. But, we’ve also been 100% here for the fun toppers with colorful sayings like, “About Damn Time” or “Shit Just Got Real”. Of course, it doesn’t have to be curse words. We saw one that just said, “Finally” with two intertwined hearts.
Then, there’s always the different take on the newlywed figures…the couple in superhero form, as characters from their favorite video game or movie, chasing one another around the top of the cake…this could really go any way you want it to…Etsy is a dangerous place! Whatever you decide to do for your wedding cake topper, the key is to make it fun and to make it special to you. It’s your wedding! Make it about you!
A Trend that Never Goes Out of Style
Wedding cake trends will always come and go. As an award-winning wedding cake bakery, 5 years running, if we have one piece of advice to give you when it comes to your wedding cake, it’s to make it yours. If you’re planning a 2022 or 2023 wedding, chances are it’s a long-time coming. Don’t settle on a crappy cake because you just want to get it over with. We eat, sleep, and breathe cake. Literally. We’re here to answer all your wedding cake questions and genuinely want you to have the best day possible. No matter what design you pick, having a great tasting cake that your guests talk about for months after your wedding is a trend that will never go out of style. That’s where we come in. Let’s get started today.