OMG...I'm so interested in this fake cake thing. I want this exact design but in Apple Red. Please email me as soon as possible my wedding is in six months. Email me @ graceygee@yahoo.com

The invitations I also made myself. I designed them, got some card and printed them on my own computer. They looked pro.

I made the favors by using the same design ftom the invites to make heart-shaped boxes in which I put tealights and tied closed with ribbon. You can get tealights in bags pretty cheaply. It also gives a nice "theme" yo use the same design. I made the Thank You cards too.

I would never spend 8,000 on a cake! but eveybody's different.

I think that a wedding should be whatever anybody wants-- and you forget the enormous pressure put on couple by their parents, who often are the ones footing the bills.

Just enjoy the wedding and let people do what makes them happy. If a couple can't decide on their budget and where to spend it, then maybe they should be getting married-- because a wedding is not the only time in their life that these kinds of decisions need to be made.

My husband and I are both in college and pretty much penniless, so we decided to just dress up nice and head on over to the courthouse. Our wedding cost us a total of $20 and we've never regretted it. I think his stepfather was pretty stunned as well as pleased, since he had just shelled out 20K for his own daughter's wedding only a few months previously and was hurting badly from that.

The cost of a traditional wedding, even a budgeted one, can amount to a year's worth of rent and groceries easy! Personally, I'd rather save the cash and know I can afford the cost of living rather than blow it all on some momentary extravagance. One of my friends from school got married a year and a half back, and wanted a fairy-tale princess theme to everything. They spent a ridiculous amount of money, since they were in love and wanted to make the day as special (and materialistic) as possible. Now, they are still so in debt by their wedding that they constantly quarrel, he can't afford to get his degree, and they are considering divorce. Sad, really.

With styro as a base, I'm free to design this thing to be as wacky, inverted, or gravity-defying as I so choose. (The fiancee and I are both graphic designers, so we're going the "new design" route, rather than using a pre-made.) It also means that the design can be more intricate and polished, since she can work on the things for weeks without working about the cake taking on a festive core of mold. No refrigeration required, so there's less frantic carting it around, and less chance of damaging condensation forming.

As for the questions of authenticity-- the designed cake is merely a visual centerpiece. To go "faux" is a good tradeoff, still keeping the tradition, but freeing up stress and money for the real food, drink, and entertainment that, I assure you, our guests will enjoy much more. I'm saving my pomp dollar for where it'll go further.

And I'm with all of you on the photographer: We're going pro as well, and sinking the budget into it. One nice thing is that we're getting digitals and rights on all the resulting photos (a "package" of prints from the photog is still included), so we can use them all as we like afterward.

Rent the wife, eh? That's worth considering! :D

Granted, you don't need the photos to help you remember the event, but since things happen so fast, it's nice to get a record of things. A large part of our budget went to the professional photographer and we are quite happy.

If you truly can't afford a photographer, what about putting up a want-ad at the local community college? There are surely several photography students who'd like a paying job, especially for the experience.

To get back to topic, we had a small wedding and an inexpensive real cake. Having a fake cake seems odd; why not rent plastic food props for the guests then roll out the overcooked food later?

Except for children. We only love our adult family. That's the real way to save money - no children.

That said, my wife and I both agreed that we'd rather spend more time and money on our honeymoon then the wedding. I think we spent ~$2000. My wife paid $35 for her dress on sale, $100 for my suit. Most of the expense came in the catering and tent rentals.

We paid $80 for a beautiful, 3-tier non-dairy cake (we're both lactose-intolerant) from Chicago Diner. The bottom layer was enough to feed both our families (smallish slices though). You just have to do your research and search around for the best deal.

When the wedding was done, we had a 2-week honeymoon down Route 66 to LA. What a blast! And it only cost less than $3000 for the whole trip!

All of you that think this is so stupid are probably bitter that you didn't think of this idea for your weddings.

I have a 400+ guest wedding coming up. If I can talk my finance into this... I'm all for it.

shdwsclan: The fake cake is for show, there is more cake in the back with the caterers. I don't know what area or country you are from, but most people don't cut their own cake at a wedding.

I love the live plant idea -- I may steal that idea. ;-)

My friend went to a wedding where they cut into a beautiful chocolate cake and the couple fed each other. Then they rolled the cake away and brought out hundreds of presliced cake pieces.

It was a different, non-chocolate poor quality cake.

That sucks.

we saved on flowers by using live green plants on the tables, in nice little chinese foral pots. they made for nice giveaways - my parents still have theirs, 9 years later. we felt the symbolism of something that would possibly thrive was better than cut flowers.

"We're not having flowers, I think they're a total waste of money. We'll put little candles or something on the tables. Ditto for wedding favors"

We did the same because I'm direly allergic to flowers. :) Allow me to suggest (more advice from a total stranger)! We got white tapers in lengths from 6" to something like 18" (huge) and stood them in groups of about 8 in the center of each table as a centerpiece. Looked way elegant and was very inexpensive. (We must have rented the candleholders.) For placecards AND favors, we got cylindrical votive candle holders (about 2 1/2" tall, try a religious supply store for lower prices), put a tealight in each one, and printed names on vellum-ish paper in some scripty font, which were then cut out and wrapped around each glass votive cylinder (and taped). They made very pretty placecards with the light flickering behind them and nice "favors" for people to take home.

So the bakery suggested we use a dummy styrofoam layer for the bottom and real cakes for the top three layers. That way I could have the big pretty cake I wanted without paying for twice as much cake as I needed. She charged me $25 for the dummy layer and everyone was happy.

I don't see what the big deal is. Our cake was not ostentatious but with such a small wedding, even a tiny layered cake would have been way too much cake. Using a dummy layer was the perfect solution.

And hubby and I have been married almost 15 years so this isn't a new thing.

Pfft. My husband and father were both way into it.

But it wasn't some bridezilla festival o' selfishness -- it was a SERIOUS RELIGIOUS CEREMONY followed by a once-in-a-lifetime party with everyone we're related to. (And yes, it was big. My parents were going to do it up style, BY GOD, if they were throwing the family event of the year.)

Who's "into" the wedding planning depends a lot on whether you're planning a big perfect party focused on some chick wearing white, or a major life event with everyone you love.

um, i am going to give you the 'total advice from a stranger' bit.... my husband and i arranged our wedding on the 'i still have a semester of grad school left' budget. a friend insisted on taking our pictures as her present to us. imagine our surprise when she showed up with a point-and-shoot 35mm (this was before you'd want to photograph importand events on digital - oh, ancient times indeed.) the *only* thing i regret about our wedding is not getting at least a minimal professional package.

I don't want to get married. I'm reading over prices, and all I can think about is all the hundreds of video games 8 thousand dollars could buy instead of a cake.

The prices cited by some of the commenters make me want to bake my own damn cake.

The one expense that was outside of my standard package was the photographer. I had to have great wedding pictures, and I wasn't going to rely on the chapel's photographer.

Oh, and my hair and makeup. I couldn't have done it without professional hair and makeup. My makeup was applied at 3:00pm and lasted past midnight.

There were 4 tiers and 4 layers in each tier. Chocolate cake topped with chocolate mousse topped with hazelnut dacquoise topped with caramel mousse mixed with caramelized apples topped with hazelnut dacquoise topped with chocolate mousse and finally topped with chocolate cake. It RULED!

So if you're in Snohomish County (north of Seattle) and want the best wedding cake in the universe, well, short of cutting off an arm and a leg for a cake from Mike's Amazing Cakes in Redmond, you HAVE to go with Judy Tallant of Tallant House. Google it, she's got a website and she totally lives up to her name.

Incredible. No wonder I don't live there. Everything is expensive. My wife and I had about 200 guests at our wedding. I think a 3-tier cake and a big sheet cake was $250, with 3 different flavours for each tier and the sheet cake being white/chocolate marble.

It isnt fooling anyone, they have to announce it, because people would try to cut the foam....

They'll be like...."May i have your attention please, there is are only 2 pieces of cake because were so po' we should even be married..., thankyou"

Besides, you'll never eat it all, and in a year, it will STILL taste like sawdust when you take it out of the freezer.

typical cakes run $750 or higher for a 100 person wedding in Southern California.

The perfect fairy tale wedding a woman sees in her head should not be messed with.

Or do a smaller cake. and serve the slices from an inexpensive sheet cake in the back room.

Besides, I LOVE wedding cake. Especially frozen, a week later. Mmmmmmmm, frozen wedding cake.