I have been making wedding cakes for thirty years.
In that time I have watched trends arrive with great fanfare, peak loudly, and then quietly disappear. I have learned not to panic when they arrive and not to crow when they leave. The tide does what the tide does.
But I have never, in three decades, seen quite so many alternatives competing for the spot that the wedding cake used to occupy without question.
The cheese tower. The doughnut wall. And now, the one currently getting every photographer’s attention — the champagne coupe pyramid, glasses stacked high, bubbles cascading on cue.
I have no desire to deride any of them. Couples should have exactly what they want on their wedding day. That has always been my position and it always will be. But, I have watched this industry long enough to know something that the trends don’t tell you. Every single one of them is a reaction and reactions always provoke a counter-reaction.
Let me take you back to the early 1980s.
The wedding cake of that era was a particular thing. Tiered fruit cake, separated by plastic pillars, coated in thick royal icing with piped borders running along every edge. A plastic bride and groom standing to attention on the top tier. It was formal, it was traditional, and after a while, it started to feel heavy. Dated. Like something from a different world.
So the industry reacted. Sugarpaste arrived and softened everything. Rounded bevelled edges replaced the sharp formality and sponge cakes replaced fruit cakes. By the 1990’s, design had become more contemporary, cleaner, more minimal, the generic toppers quietly falling out of favour. The cake became lighter, friendlier, more approachable.
And then that softness ran its course too.
A technique arriving from Australia in the early 2000s changed everything. Coating a sponge cake base in chocolate ganache gave decorators a firmer foundation, which meant sugarpaste could be rolled thinner, which meant edges could be sharper. And suddenly the square edge came back, but it was transformed. Cleaner. More architectural. Without the piping, because now the craft was confident enough to let the edge speak for itself.
Reaction. Counter-reaction. Evolution.
That is how this industry has always moved. Not in straight lines but in conversations, each new direction responding to the one before it, pushing against it, eventually becoming the very thing the next generation pushes against in turn.
Which brings me to now.
The wedding industry has changed significantly since the pandemic. Ingredient costs rose sharply. Venues closed. Budgets tightened. Couples who had waited two years to get married arrived with different priorities, different ideas about where their money should go.
Social media filled the gap with images — rustic naked cakes, plain tiers scattered with fresh flowers, the clean minimal aesthetic that photographs beautifully and can be approximated relatively easily.
And then something I had never encountered before in thirty years started to happen with more frequency. Couples asking for a cake built around a polystyrene base. The look without the cake. A decoration to place in the corner of a room.
I understand it, I genuinely do, when the budget is under pressure a beautiful prop makes a certain kind of sense. But here is what I know, and what I have watched couples discover for themselves.
No one remembers the prop.
Over the years I have had couples come back to me, sometimes months later, sometimes years and they tell me something that never gets old to hear. They came to me with a screenshot from Pinterest. A generic image, something they had seen and liked, something that felt safe. Somewhere in our conversations, as we started to talk about their lives, their story, and the small details that make them who they are, something shifted. The cake became theirs, subtle personal touches woven in quietly, a visual language that only they and the people closest to them would fully understand. On their special day, guests stopped. Looked closer. Asked questions. Conversations started in front of that cake that would never have started in front of a polystyrene prop or a tower of champagne coupes.
And years later, looking back at the photographs, they smile. Not just at how it looked. At who they were.
I always tell couples this. Imagine yourselves at your golden wedding anniversary, looking back through your wedding album. A bespoke cake, one that was designed around the people you actually are will make you smile and reminisce about the version of yourselves that stood in that room together. It becomes a time capsule made in sugar.
No trend can offer that. No champagne tower. No doughnut wall.
So what comes next?
I have learned to be honest about the limits of prediction. I have been in this industry long enough to know that certainty is for people who haven’t watched enough trends come and go.
But here is what I believe.
Novelty has a short shelf life. Every alternative to the wedding cake got its moment because it felt different, because it photographed well, because it wasn’t what everyone else had done the decade before. And then, one by one, they became exactly what everyone else was doing. The Instagram scroll that once made them feel fresh started to make them feel familiar. Generic. Interchangeable.
The counter-reaction is coming. It always does.
And when couples start looking for something that cannot be found easily, something that requires skill, patience, devotion, and a maker who will spend months in conversation with them about who they are, they are going to discover that the people capable of providing it have become quietly, unexpectedly rare.
Because while the tide was out, not everyone kept the skills sharp.
Some of us did.
The champagne tower gets the photo.
But fifty years from now, nobody will be looking back at that photograph and feeling something catch in their throat.
The cake that was made for you — only ever for you, by hands that understood what was at stake — that is a different thing entirely.
That has always been a different thing entirely.