Deciding how much cake to get for your wedding day can be a tricky conundrum. On the one hand, you'd hate to pay for cake no one will eat, but on the other, you want to make sure every guest gets a bite.
Since it is good practice to order your wedding cake at least 6 months before your wedding, as well, it can be tricky determining just how much cake you'll need. After all, you probably don't have invitations sent out yet, let alone having got them back! Lucky for you, I'm here to give you a few tips on how to decide how much cake you'll need for your wedding day.
1) Start with the number of guests you'll be inviting. Let's pretend you're inviting 120 people.
2) How close is the wedding to where you are from? Standard fare is to assume that 80% of guests invited will come to the wedding, but if you are having a destination wedding, where guests will have to travel further, you may be able to consider even less. I find that generally my destination brides have about 70% of their invited guests attend. Let's assume that you are a destination bride. This means you're now looking at a cake for 84 people. And with a wedding cake, that can be a big difference.
3) Are you having a seated/plated dinner, or serving hors d'oeurves or a buffet instead? If you are having a buffet style or hors d'oeurves style dinner, you might be able to knock a few more servings off. Be careful with this one, however. You'll need to keep in mind that while some people may not eat cake, others may grab two or three plates. If you are having a seated/plated dinner, do not skimp. Play it safe: if you are having a plated dinner, get a cake that will feed all invited guests, just in case. You will look pretty silly if not everyone gets served a slice of cake.
4) Are you having other desserts? If you are having a groom's cake, divide your servings between the two. If you are serving things like cookies or pastries, then your guests may not also grab a slice of wedding cake.
In general, however, it is better to have too much cake than not enough.
You will also need to keep in mind that, of course, as you scale down the number of servings for your cake, your cake will become smaller. This sounds like common sense, but I frequently have brides who will say:
"I only need my cake to feed 75 people, but I want it to be HUGE!"
These things do not go together. Only you can prioritize what is important to you. Is it more important that you have a large cake, or is it more important that you don't have any leftover cake? Different things matter to different people.
Take a look at what your whole reception looks like, talk to your planner, and most importantly, talk to your cake designer. They are professionals, and will be able to tell you what will best fit your special day.
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