Although you will still find basic clean lines on wedding cakes, many couples are adding texture to their design and spicing it up with unexpected twists!

Today brides and grooms are embracing not only color, but wedding cakes full of fun patterns!  The flavors and styles are all over the board.  No longer do you simply find a bakery for your wedding cake, if you are looking for one of these elaborate cakes you need an artist.  You need someone who can bring out the life in the cake and reflect your personality.  Each layer could be a different flavor with polka dots on half the cake and stripes and designs on the other.

How did you make your cake stand out?  Did you go to your bakery with a vision or did you let the artist design her own style?

Source: Manifest Vegan, Isabel Lawerence

There is definitely a cupcake craze going on in the wedding industry!  Do you serve the traditional delicious wedding cake, or do you you get creative with a variety of flavors and colors of cupcakes in the shape of a cake?  I came across this mini cake, three tiered cupcake  wedding extravaganza. A unique mixture of trendy cupcakes in the shape of tradition to serve your guests!

Source: The Kitchen

When your sweet tooth starts craving a dessert in the evening, I encourage all of you brides-to-be to  consider savoring a Skinny Cow dessert guilt-free!  While planning and celebrating your upcoming wedding, there are numerous occasions when delicious sweets begin to tempt you away from your strict bridal boot camp!  These ice cream cones, sandwiches or bars are low in fat and only 140 calories!  (Did I mention that they taste heavenly?!)

I love when brides get creative with desserts such as creating an alternative wedding cake with food they love.  I think the picture above is a perfect example of how taking a simple ice cream sandwich with a little imagination and turning it into a beautiful centerpiece at your wedding or bridal shower.

Pass around a variety of flavors at your wedding and let your guests decide whether they want a vanilla, chocolate, strawberry or mint-flavored ice cream sandwich!  Recreate this Skinny Cow wedding cake as a centerpiece at your next bridal shower. All women love desserts that will not add to their waistline!

**Skinny Cow Giveaway**

Skinny Cow is offering one lucky winner a month of desserts for FREE!

Here’s how to enter:

1.) Visit Skinny Cow and come back and leave a comment here telling me which flavor of Skinny Cow  dessert is your favorite!

To earn additional entries:
2.) Follow @bubblybride on Twitter
3.) Tweet about the contest
4.) Post about the contest on Facebook
5.) Post about the contest on your blog
6.) Follow my blog or subscribe to rss feed

(leave a separate comment for each with a link to each posting, if applicable)

To enter, post comments below by June 26, 2009. The winner will be announced on Bubbly Bride on June 29. Good luck!!

A unique way to decorate the tables at your wedding reception along with serving delicious cakes to your guests is creating small  individual cakes for each table.   Find fun cake stands to add height to the cake, while decorating with a different style for each cake with a similar color scheme!  Use these as centerpieces and double them as table numbers like the picture on the bottom from Cakes to Celebrate!

One of my favorite ideas if you choose to use these as centerpieces is to choose 5 different cake flavors and spread out the different cakes and flavors around the room.  When it is dessert time your guests will be encouraged to walk around the room and find their favorite flavor while chatting with your friends and family at each table, getting to know each other better!

Adding different heights to the cakes will make the centerpiece more interesting.  Also by doubling these as your cake, centerpieces and table numbers you will end up saving money by not having separate items for each.  In addition, you will save money on cake cutting fees from venues!

What are some of your ideas for using cakes as centerpieces?

Sources: Amazing Cake, Eli Silva Photography, Kristine Pringle Photograph, Edible Recipes

If you have a special quote or saying that has always been special to your heart…why hide it in the back of a program?  I suggest proudly displaying it, like the pictures below, on your cake!  Make the saying the centerpiece of your wedding so none of your guests can miss it!

Leave me a comment with what you wrote on your cake that personalized your wedding cake!

Source: Life as a New Mrs. , Manassas Cakery , About the Cake, Maisie Fantasie,

You have seen these recently all over blogs, magazines and at weddings.  Cupcake Cakes are the hot trend going on right now at weddings.  Brides are finding unique ways to display these sweets so that each individual serving is as scrumptious as the next!

These are not only fashionable, but they are a great way to help save on costs! Most venues have “cake-cutting” costs that add an additional $250 – $300 additional depending on how many guests you have! With a cupcake cake your guests can grab their dessert and not worry about any secret costs from vendors.

Don’t think because you are not hosting a traditional wedding cake that you have to sacrifice style or color! In my opinion  you have even more opportunity to play around with colors and create unique designs! Use a variety of shades and shapes incorporated into your cupcakes, but keep the theme consistent!

What I love most about these cupcakes is they are the perfect individual sizes for a dessert.  They are portioned out and easy to eat on the go. There is no arguing on who got the bigger portion, hopefully they are all the same!   With the icing piled high, how can you refuse these delectable treats!?

How did you design your cupcake cake at your wedding? Send me pictures!

Source: Great Wedding Cakes, A Piece of Cake, Mr & Mrs Sweets, Alive not Dead

Can you imagine three delicious pastry shops under one roof?  In one trip to Sweet Collective you can find chocolate & candies at Rich, designer cakes at The Sugar Syndicate  and gourmet ice cream at Ruth&Phils.

Three women brought together for their love of sweets and designing customized treats for you!

Rich :: chocolates & candies

With their philosophy: while trends may come and go, chocolate should always be sweet.  They are inspired by childhood memories and the city around them, to their own favorite food and drinks! Each delicious delicacy is made by hand with the sole purpose of making someones day a bit sweeter. :)

The Sugar Syndicate :: Specialty Pastries

Modern and classic, playful and sophisticated, The Sugar Syndicate combines sumptuous pastry and hand-crafted decorations to provide you with a uniquely personal creation for your special occasion.

Ruth&Phils :: Gourmet Ice Cream

Ruth & Phils Gourmet Ice Cream is a retail and wholesale store selling ice cream, sorbet and frozen desserts with customized, original flavors. They use fresh, top quality fruits, chocolates, nuts and spices to produce complex, deep flavors. Their ice creams and sorbets are strong on taste, but light on fat and sugar.

My mouth is watering simply writing this post!  If you live in the Chicagoland area I highly recommend checking out this sugary collection of sweets.  Whether you are featuring them at your wedding with a one of a kind cake design, or you are serving up individual unique chocolate candies as favors, your guests will love not only the yummy taste but the scrumptious presentation!

Source: Sweet Collective

Since moving to Chicago I am amazed at the variety of vendors and choices you have as a bride and groom.  Recently I came across a bakery like none that I have ever seen: The Bleeding Heart Bakery. They were the first certified Organic Bakery in Chicago and have lived up to their mission since, always changing their menu but staying true to their out of the box organic style.

This is one of the few bakeries where punk rock and delicious pastries go together.  Its funky style, and scrumptious sweets are addicting.  Their mission is simple: “to create edgy yet beautiful pastries that provoke thought and emotion and is above all, superior in taste and always organic.” Over on Belmont and Damen, Michelle Garcia is taking baking to a new level!!  She is showing everyone how delicious organic foods can be and still manages to have time to incorporate events such as canned food drives and knocking on doors selling cupcakes for Obama.

Is your mouth beginning to water by looking at these cupcakes? Would you believe me if I told you they were gluten free?  Bleeding Heart Bakery is able to make vegan look and sound salivating even to every carnivore out there! Many brides have incorporated this bakery into their big day and have uniquely wonderful creations for their cakes. A few of my favorites are shown below but if you want to see most of their artistic ability visit their flickr page: Bleeding Heart Bakery.

I adore the designs on these cakes and can’t even begin to imagine what the flavor of each one is, all organic, all the time!  If you are in the area, stop by this bakery and meet Michelle and Vinny and try one of the many tasty treats they have available!

Check out their website: Bleeding Heart Organic Bakery.

I LOVE sweets.  But I am not a cake person, so when it came time to choose my wedding cake flavor I didn’t have much of a preference.  I always heard about how much fun it is to go to the cake tasting, with the millions of flavors and icing choices!  I left that decision mainly to my husband.  If I had heard about this idea sooner maybe I would have taken an extra piece of cake on my wedding day.  Rice Krispie Treats are my weakness, and having an entire cake made of rice krispies is what I would call my perfect day!

You might not believe me when I tell you that the cake above was made purely of rice krispie treats…but that is the wonderful thing about the recent artists that took on baking!  They can take any flavor or texture and turn it into a beautiful creation!

Scrumptious marshmallow goodness will await you on your wedding day if you choose this specialty cake flavor! It will also save you some money in the budget due to the fewer ingredients and less time that is spent baking.  You can still find a unique cake topper and decorate with the same flowers you had planned to use, but this is something that your guests will definitely not be expecting!

If you still want the traditional cake on your wedding day with the different flavors and icings, consider having a rice krispie grooms cake or building miniature rice krispie cakes and giving them away as favors.  This could be a great DIY project! Look for a future blog post on how to make Rice Krispie Treat favors!!

If you decide to have this unique style of wedding cake…make sure you invite me

What flavor of cakes have you done that are outside the norm?

Sources: Manis Bakery, Cup Cake Tree, Richardson Wedding Blog, Art of Dessert