2023 Wedding Trends

2023 Wedding Trends

I love ALL wedding cake designs, I really do! But one of my favorite things about the new year and engagement season, is seeing what trends start to emerge with couples and their cakes.

When we meet with a new couple, we ask them to bring images and ideas that they want to incorporate into their cakes. Most of the time, couples have images they like on their phone, sometimes they print their ideas out and occasionally couples come in with their invitations, swatches, monograms and other more abstract ideas.

We love to design cakes using any and all of these methods! When brides show me their Pinterest boards, I love it because I can immediately get a feel for their style. Usually, there will be 3-4 pinned cakes that have similar elements and I can tell right away what they like.

It’s only mid-January, but the trends I’m seeing emerge at this point are the following:

Pearls: Scattered sugar pearl cakes started making the rounds last year and continue to be popular this year. Pearl/bead borders are back, too! While these sugar pearls are edible, some of the larger ones (8mm+) can be really hard and you can potentially break a tooth…eek! Be sure that your baker understands to use sugar pearls and NOT dragees, which are plastic and not edible. And if you choose a design that includes larger pearls, make sure they are removed before serving.

Clear Separators: The floating cake look and acrylic separators have been gaining popularity in the last several months and will continue into the 2023 wedding season. Our favorite separators are here, but you’ll want to check with your baker to make sure what size you need.

Piped & Painted Florals: Cakes that include florals, but not with fresh or silk flowers are becoming very popular! Piping flowers with buttercream and palette painting on cakes is a great way to add a pop of color to your cake while keeping it 100% edible!
Nearly Naked: These cakes aren’t going anywhere! The very thin layer of icing on these cakes allow the actual cake to show through, giving it an interesting and rustic look. While we are still creating a lot of these cakes, some guests are opting to offer bowls of icing or filling at their cake tables, so guest who love icing can add a bit more to their slice. Also, be sure you’re aware of what each cake flavor your baker offers will look like as a nearly naked cake. Strawberry cake is usually pink and the red coloring of Red Velvet will be visible on this cake style, so make sure you’re cool with that look.

Large Cakes: For the past several years, we have made A LOT of Kitchen Cakes. Kitchen Cakes are essentially sheet cakes on steroids. Our Kitchen Cakes are 4″ tall and include two layers of cake with a filling, so that, once cut, no one can tell the difference between a piece of the main cake or the Kitchen Cake. These extra servings are typically cheaper, so couples can have a smaller cake on display and still serve all of their guests a bit more affordably. However, this year, we are seeing larger cakes that serve all the guests. Our four tier 6-8-10-12 cake will serve 118 and allow for the couple to save the complimentary anniversary tier on top. This cake is perfect for the 150 person reception and is, hands down, our most popular cake size. (Each of the cakes above are this size.)

We are also seeing faux tiers to make cakes larger than the couple actually needs for servings. For example, the same 6-8-10-12 cake mentioned above only serves 62 if the bottom tier is faux. Couples can still have the 4-tier look, but only serve 62 with the use of a faux tier.

What trends are you starting to see? Are there any that you wish would fade away?