If you’d like a wedding cake fit for a president’s daughter, then the Chelsea Clinton wedding cake might interest you. At her Summer 2010 wedding, Chelsea Clinton’s wedding cake came in at a price tag of a $11,000. Do not adjust your screen – you read right!

The Chelsea Clinton Wedding cake stood 4 feet tall and weighed a hefty 500 pounds! No photos have been officially released to the public, but as for style, the  former first daughter’s wedding cake was very elegant and traditional. It was 9 tiers, mainly white with little accents of silver and for the wedding cake decorations it featured small silver circular designs on the base of each tier (almost little silver beads that looked like half-wheels and a total of 1,000 edible sugar flowers that were delicately brushed with pearl accent. This is in keeping with the edible cake decorations trend that is in style now. Chelsea’s edible sugar flower decorations were mostly roses, a few hydrangeas, some calla lilies, and two types of orchids.

For flavor, Chelsea chose vanilla with dark chocolate mousse. The ingredients were mostly organic and all local to the area.

Chelsea Clinton ordered her wedding cake from La Tulipe Desserts  in Westchester, New York where it was created by an entire team of 9 cake decorators and bakers. Established in 1999, the bakery has a well known reputation for their fabulous confectionery creations -  from tarts and pies to cookies and, of course, wedding cakes.

Incidentally, Chelsea Clinton made the decision to have a gluten-free wedding cake. Former US President Bill Clinton’s only daughter is reportedly vegan and has a gluten sensitivity (though her cake was not vegan). Experts predict that there will likely be a growing trend toward gluten free wedding cakes over the next while as a result of such a high profile person opting for a gluten free wedding cake. Celebrity wedding cakes often inspire new trends. Currently only about 5% of wedding cakes are gluten free, according to wedding cake decorators and bakers so we`ll watch for this number to grow.

“This will empower people to make these requests,” says Grace Clerihew, a principal at Table Tales, a New York City catering firm. “Prior to this, they might have thought it was not mainstream enough to even talk about, but now that they see it being done by such a public persona it becomes acceptable.”

Clerihew thinks more couples will now be consider vegan and gluten-free wedding cake options “in a more inspired way” because of the Chelsea Clinton wedding cake.

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It might seem obvious that the decorations on a cake should be edible, but its always been very popular for wedding cakes to be decorated with non-edible decorations.  Plastic do-dads, silk flowers and the like managed to dress up the wedding cake, but they weren’t edible. The style-savvy couple of today won’t settle for plastic trinkets and fake flowers on their wedding cake; couples now expect their wedding cake decorations to be good enough to eat.

Hottest Edible Wedding Cake Decorations Ideas

Here are the hottest edible wedding cake decorations right now:

Edible Gold – Yes, we’re talking real gold, that you can eat. For the ultimate in luxury, imagine your wedding cake covered, or at least accented in real gold.  Consider covering your cake or portions of it with sheets of edible gold, or go or edible gold accents using real gold flakes 0r sprinkles.  Incredibly thin pieces of almost pure gold add a fair bit of bling to your wedding cake. Covering an entire cake in real edible gold could of course get quite spendy, but if you use it selectively, just for accent, you can have a gold cake… and eat it too. Real gold highlights make a wedding cake seem extravagant and and lavish, but the truth is that you can buy a box of edible gold for about $20, and that should be enough to glam up your cake to impress your guests. And yes: it’s safe to eat and has no discernable flavor. If you want a wedding cake that’s as good as gold, edible gold is the ultimate inedible  wedding cake decorations.

Next Time:
In our next post we’ll continue our count-down of the hottest edible wedding cake decorations. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, check out some edible cake decorations ideas for other occasions (Christmas, birthdays, etc),

Take a look at the major wedding cake styles and trends to help you decide on a cake that will actually compliment the rest of your wedding…

The Classic Cake:

The classic wedding cake is a round or square cake with multiple tiers. It features white cream or fondant icing. Nothing avant gare or over the edgy, just beautiful and timeless. Tiers can be stacked one directly on top of the next, or separated by cake pillars. Once highly traditional for wedding cakes, we now see less of fruitcake than we did a few decades ago, but its still sometimes used for a very traditional, classic wedding cake. Its a good choice if you want to uphold the tradition of saving the top layer of your wedding cake for your first anniversary because fruitcake keeps very well and freezes nicely. If you don’t want your entire wedding cake to be fuit cake, its also quite traditional to have only the top layer made of fruitcake, with the other layers being another classic choice such as  marble, caramel, white cake, white chocolate or carrot cake.

• 2011 Wedding Cake Trends:

Wedding Cake Decorations:

A simple iced cake with decorative flowers at the top (instead of an ornamental cake topper). Flowers may be fresh or silk as long as the choice of silk flowers is realistic in appearance. Satin ribbons border the base of each layer.

Black and White cakes are very much a trend for 2011.

The Themed Wedding Cake:

Themed wedding cakes are colorful, imaginative, highly creative. The often are characterized by a sense of whimsy or drama.

A Themed wedding cake is a reflection of your individuality and daring personality. If you like to stand out this is probably the type of cake for you. And if you want your cake to be remembered by guests, a theme wedding cake will generally do the trick!

Look for inspiration for your wedding cake in your theme you’ve picked for your wedding. If your wedding really doesnt have a theme, consider the wedding location in developing a theme for your wedding cake. A beach wedding, for instance, might have a sandcastle cake,  or a cake covered with a seashell motif. Or bring out the theme for your wedding cake by choosing a unique cake topper. Back to the beach wedding example, you might have a couple of miniature lawn chairs for your topper.

Multiple shapes such as squares combined with round and pyramid tiers are very trendy at the moment

Use your Honeymoon location as inspiration – If you are going skiing, try a snow-white cake in the shape of a snowy mountain. For a Parisian honeymoon, a sophisticated black and white cake with an Eiffel tower topper will be well suited.

The Cupcake Wedding Cake:

Individual, beautifully decorated cupcakes stacked high remain very popular again this year. A great choice for a buffet reception or a garden wedding. Because cupcakes have wrappers they can be enjoyed while standing and so the cupcake wedding cake is also an ideal choice for a stand-up reception or a relaxed, informal wedding reception. Your cupcake sizes can range anywhere from muffin-size (if this is the only desert to be served at your wedding reception) to those tiny, miniature cupcakes.

• 2011 Trends:

Heart shaped cupcakes with red and pink icing for a romantic theme.

Gluten or dairy-free cakes for guests with dietary requirements are also very important, as more and more people are being diagnosed with food allergies

The Chocolate cake

Imagine a delicious chocolate ganache exterior, decorated with chocolate swirls, shards and shavings, with a decadent fudge or caramel interior. Chocolate cakes are very fashionable, versatile and popular right now, but are recommended in very cool months or for air-conditioned venues.

• 2011 Trends:

Dark Chocolate mouse cake with fresh fruit, dipped in chocolate or dusted with coco or icing.

Color contrasted – butter cake or milk chocolate cake interior with dark chocolate outside and visa versa.

The Contemporary cake

This is a cake with a modern twist on the classic / traditional cake. It is ideal for a wedding in a distinctly modern setting, or for an artistic couple. With a ‘less is more’ mantra, these classic square cakes should be an innovative and contemporary work of edible art. For an elegant yet modern look, square shaped cake layers can be stacked slightly off centre in shades of ivory or white.

• 2011 Trends:

Add a fake ‘display’ layer to give the cake some height.

A Single layer cake, simple decorated with a highlight on top.

Match the exact color of your theme or highlight to the cake color

Adding a little ‘bling’ to your cake – such as Pearls or Swarovski crystals, will give it that wow factor.

Create unusual shaped stands using Perspex, metal or glass to give it a contemporary feel

The Croquembouche

The croquembouch is a hot trend. It isn’t just very tasty, but can be beautifully decorated with flowers and caramel sugar strings.

The Wedding cake gives you the perfect opportunity to add to your color scheme or theme, and that is why you should really put some thought into it and discuss your theme with your Cake maker.

Make the process of choosing your wedding cake fun and personal. Whether you are having a fun and funky theme or a romantic traditional celebration, it is very important to fit the style of the cake into your wedding.

This is one of the details in your wedding that allows you to step out of the box and have a cake that your guests will remember for a long time

It all comes down to any of these three factors:

-     The flavor

-     The wedding cake decorations

-     Or, both

Take this theory for a test drive for a moment. Think back to the last wedding you were at.  Do you even remember the wedding cake?

Right now, a good number of you who are reading this are saying, “Uh-uh. Nope”.

As for the small minority of you who actually do remember the wedding cake, allow me to ask – what is it that you remember about that wedding cake?  Was it the flavor (did it taste absolutely amazing, or particularly horrendous)? Or was it the appearance of the wedding cake, in other words, the wedding cake decorations, that made the cake memorable?

Its got to be one of the two, or perhaps both.

Let’s talk visuals.  What makes a wedding cake visually memorable? It all comes down to the wedding cake decorations. Take the wedding cake decorations off of the wedding cake, and what have you got?  Just a cake. Nothing special. A plain, boring cake.

So you see, as far as visuals go, the wedding cake decorations make the cake.

That’s why we’ve developed an entire website about wedding cake decorations. Because ultimately, that’s what a wedding cake boils down to – the wedding cake decorations. It’s all in the decorations.

So this site will help you focus on and explore the world of ideas and options for wedding cake decorations so you end up with a wedding cake that is the important focal point at your wedding reception that every wedding cake is supposed to be, and not something that guests don’t even bother to blink an eye at.

If you want to make an impression with your wedding cake, it’s time to get going with the ideas for how your cake will look – in other words, your wedding cake decorations.

Will your cake be decorated with fondant or gumpaste? Will you use flowers? If so, will they be icing, fresh, or silk? And if you said “fresh flowers”, will these be edible flowers (real flowers you can actually eat, or non-edible (just good to look at, but not good enough to eat!).

And what about other wedding cake decorations? Will your cake have separators? For instance ornamental pillars are used to separate tiers or a tiered wedding cake. Or do you prefer the look where one layer sits directly on the next?

Will your cake be decorated in icing motifs? If so, what motif do you have in mind. If your wedding has a theme, your wedding cake decorations will probably be influenced by the theme. For example, imagine that your wedding has a French theme. You could have your wedding cake decorator decorate your cake by icing the word “Paris” in small handwriting script all over the wedding cake.  You could top your wedding cake with a miniature Eiffel Tower cake topper.

And that brings us to one last consideration when it comes to wedding cake decorations – will your wedding cake have a cake topper, or will you go “topless”?

As you can see, there are so many ideas and options, and you’ve got a lot to think about as you plan your wedding cake. There are a ton of ideas and inspiration on this site to help you create the perfect wedding cake using wedding cake decorations that suit your own personal style. Be sure to look around at all the ideas , tips and advice on this site for wedding cake decorations.

All of us have heard the saying “it is all about the presentation”, well that is very true in this case. Wedding cakes are more creative today than they were ten, fifteen, and even twenty years ago. The bride use to be the only topic after the wedding but that is not the case any longer.

The talk now is about the wedding cake, how the cake was decorated, and how creative it was. We have turned away from the more traditional look of the wedding cake to a look that reflects our personalities, ideas, and creativity. Wedding cake decorations come in different styles, sizes, and materials. You can make decorations for your wedding cake out of just about anything you can think of.

Your decorations can be made out of edible products such as fondants, gumpaste, glazes and candy pearl beads and even edible luster dust to give that shimmering look. With fondants and gumpaste, you can create any shape, size, and design you want. You can also color the icing to incorporate your wedding colors in to the cake.

Cake decorations have come a long way from the typically traditional version we have always seen.

Don’t worry if you are more of a traditional person then you can certainly still have that and even improve on the more traditional look with various types of wedding cake toppers and even a prop such as an  attached bridge for the more glamorous look for even the most traditional cakes.

Now days you can even have moving parts on your wedding cake.  Your cake can rotate and possibly have some moving parts on it.

You can find a good decorator to fulfill your dream wedding cake.  If you desire a wilder version of themes, you are more than likely to find someone to accommodate your needs. More vivid colors are available for the icing with many different techniques of applications for decorating a cake.

The options are endless with wedding cake decorations, for instance you can have your cake airbrushed with all kinds of colors with any design or scene you like.

You can have the tiniest of details for your design. If you love nature, you can even use live flowers on the cake for your decorations. They can be positioned just right with as many or few as you want. Flowers do not always have to be made of sugar even though you can eat them and they taste better.

But the look of using live flowers can also take your breath away with the vibrant colors of each petal. There are many patterns and trimming effects to bring out any design on your cake. Even wedding cakes fall within the different seasons and themes of weddings.

They can be decorated to suite all themes for any holiday, seasons and memorable times in your life. The cake decoration can reflect the place you were engaged or met your future spouse. It can be made to look like a particular place or interest you both might have. You imagination is the only thing that sets your wedding cake apart from any other.