Brief History of the Wedding Cake

By Jeff Cisneros, executive summarized by Andromeda

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Going to a wedding reception without a wedding cake is simply unheard of. The wedding cake is an important aspect of the celebration following the wedding ceremony. Guests of weddings expect to see the bride and groom feed each other the cake that symbolizes their new lives together. The history of this delicious concoction is quite long and colorful.

It can be traced as far back as the Roman era, when there were loaves of bread baked of wheat that were used to break over the newly married couple’s head. Of course the Romans did not have elaborate wedding cakes like we see today, they were just simple loaves of bread. This was to ensure the happy couple would have prosperity and luck in their lives together. If it was only broken over the bride’s head, the groom was the one doing the breaking.

The crumbs of the wedding cake were something to be savored as well. Any crumbs that landed on the floor were considered good luck and an indicator of the bride’s fertility by the guests and they scrambled without shame to gobble the remains. This was especially true of any unmarried women attending. Eating these crumbs was thought to ensure that they too would become betrothed.

• The Middle Ages

Guests attending a wedding during this era brought a small cake, usually a biscuit or a scone to the event. The small cakes were piled atop each other and it was the task of the bride and grooms to kiss each other from across the pile of cakes to ensure that they would have good luck in their life together.

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• France in the 17th Century

Icing began making its appearance when French bakers began coating wheat buns with it during the 17th century. This began a new era for wedding cakes. The decoration was now important to the success of a wedding cake and with icing this could be easily accomplished.

• Wedding Cake Traditions of the Past

The wedding cake was a symbol for most and all chose the same white cake with bland white icing because white was a part of the symbol. There were layers of cakes piled upon one another and wedding cakes soon began to resemble the wedding cakes we know and love today.

• Wedding Cakes Today

No longer do brides and grooms have to be satisfied with the old tradition of white cake and icing. Today’s modern soon to be married can choose from a variety of flavors, shapes, colors and designs. A wedding cake can now be a symbol of the life that the newly married couples expect to lead and when it comes to decoration, anything goes. Many young couples are choosing chocolate, meringues, individual cakes, and anything else that tempts their sweet tooth.

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The History of the Wedding Cake

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After the wedding dress and bride’s bouquet, maybe nothing is so powerful a wedding symbol as the wedding cake. It’s so ubiquitous; many people just assume the wedding cake has always been a part of wedding celebrations everywhere.

Like all popular beliefs, there’s some truth to that idea, though of course the real facts are much more fascinating and a whole lot more colorful.

• The Wedding Cake’s Early Days

During the heady days of the Roman Empire, wedding guests were served not one cake but a sumptuous collection of many small treats and pastries as a kind of wedding party favor. In some parts of the empire, one single cake was dropped over the bride’s head at the reception, as a way of wishing the couple good luck in the future.

Later, during the Middle Ages, many guests would bring small cakes to the wedding celebration. The cakes were all piled atop a single table, creating the beginning of the tiered wedding cake known today. As a tradition, a bride and groom that could still kiss over the pile of cakes were considered to have good luck in the upcoming marriage.

• Modern Times

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Wedding cakes began to change and grow in the 19th Century, when new means of refrigeration could keep their ingredients fresh for much longer periods.

The modern wedding cake is a kind of homage to St. Bride’s Church, a famous English Medieval Chapel. The church’s spire includes several spires, much like a tiered cake.

Many modern couples have adopted the wedding cake design to display their own interests or passions. For example, a couple fascinated by the Renaissance may choose to decorate their cake with decorations specific to that time period. The bride and groom figures atop the cake may also reflect their hobbies and pastimes.

Because modern wedding cakes have become so elaborate, their preparation time has steadily grown. Wedding planners are encouraged to make arrangements with a pastry chef up to three months in advance of the wedding reception.

• Wedding Cake Traditions

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Some popular wedding cake traditions taken from around the world include:

- A bride who cuts her own cake will have to work hard all her life.

- If the groom lays his hands over the bride’s hands as the cake is cut, they will share their possessions their whole life.

- The bride cuts the first piece of cake as a way of hoping for children.

THE WEDDING CAKE as we know it goes back to the Roman Empire where cakes were actually barley bread. The groom would partially eat the loaf and then break the rest over the bride’s head. This symbolized his dominion over her, and the crumbs that fell to the floor symbolized good luck and fertility. It was good luck as well for the guests to eat the crumbs, and single women went after crumbs to ensure their own future marriages. The breaking of the bread over the bride’s head was phased out over time, though there were still reports into the 19th century that oatcakes were broken over bride’s heads in Scotland. In Northern Scotland, bridesmaids put a napkin over the bride’s head and poured a basket of bread over her to symbolize fertility and good fortune.

During the middle ages, cakes were simply flour-based breads or biscuits. It was the guests’ duty to each bring a small cake to the ceremony. The cakes were piled up on top of each other between the bride and groom. Should the bride and groom succeed in kissing over the pile, they would have good luck in their marriage. The small, bland cakes evolved into dense fruitcakes baked well in advance of the wedding and soaked in spirits for preservation.

Flowing out of this tradition it’s came the bride’s pie, making its appearance in the 17^th century. The pie was made of anything from mince meat to mutton to sweetbreads. For poorer families, this pie made up a centerpiece of the wedding meal. A main ingredient of any pie was a glass ring. The woman who found the ring would be the next to be married – a tradition replaced by the throwing of the bouquet today.

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By the late 19th century, sugar was more widely available and the wedding cakes familiar to us began to take shape. The first known wedding confection cake appeared in 1859 and commemorated the marriage of one of Queen Victoria’s daughters. However, even with this cake, only the bottom layer was actual cake. The top tiered layers, which are reportedly inspired by the spire of the St Mary-le-Bow church in London or simply a throwback to the stacked cakes of yore, were made of spun sugar. Despite the fake upper layers, the Victorian era gave rise to the elaborately decorated cakes that we know today, with the flourishes of color, sugar and figures we’re used to seeing. It is even said that Queen Victoria herself had a cake weighing over 300 pounds!

Queen Victoria is also credited with popularizing white in a wedding to symbolize purity. White icing on wedding cakes became traditional during this time. Even before this specific symbolism, cakes were white simply because ingredients for the cakes were hard to come by, especially the sugar used in the icing. The whiter the sugar, the more refined, and therefore the more affluent the family appeared. So, the white wedding cake was originally a symbol of affluence rather than purity.

As the architecture of the cake evolved, the columns that traditionally decorated a royal cake became support columns for the upper tiers which could then be made of actual cake. Thus was born the tiered wedding cake. Often the columns were disguised broom handles serving as the true support for the weighty confections. The frosting of a cake has several possible origins. One possibility is that in the seventeenth century, a French pastry chef frosted the cake tower with sugar to ensure the buns kept their form. Another possibility is that because a lack of refrigeration would spoil the cake, a dense layer of sugar and fat would help preserve it as well as feed all the people attending the wedding.

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As the tiered cake evolved, so did the symbolism behind it. Starting in the 17th century, it was thought that sleeping with a piece of cake under one’s pillow would help them dream of their future spouses. This idea led to the tradition of brides passing crumbs of their cake through their rings and distributing them to guests who could place the crumb under their pillow. This tradition tapered off after the superstition of never removing one’s wedding ring after the ceremony appeared.

At this time, the three tiered cake became traditional. The first layer is for the reception, the second layer for distributing to guests, and the third is saved for the anniversary, leading us to another popular tradition: freezing the top tier of the cake and sharing it on the couple’s first wedding anniversary. Another take on this tradition is that the tier is unfrozen and eaten at the christening of the first child. It was assumed that this event would happen soon after the wedding, so the event would share the cake from the wedding. However, as couples waited longer after marriage to have children, the notion of saving the top tier for the christening tapered off.

The wedding cake has a rich history, but luckily in this day and age, you can have whatever size, style and flavor of cake your wedded heart desires.

Checkout my other guide on Wedding Dresses.

Continue reading Wedding Cake