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

Source: The Kitchen

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:
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(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!!

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

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,

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

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

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.

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