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Monday, September 14, 2015

Evolution of the wedding cake tradition

In our modern Western culture, the wedding cake is usually tiered, iced, and decorated per the desires of the bride. The cake at one wedding I recently attended included sheets of bling, which looked like rhinestones decorating the sides of the bottom tier. Now, the challenge is to craft a wedding cake in a way that can support the decorations and still be edible. As a result, wedding cakes have one more expense couples must figure in to the cost of their wedding. But once upon a time instead of a wedding cake there was bread.

Karavay (bride bread) is still a Russian tradition.

The first wedding cake

Many wedding traditions are linked with superstitions from long ago, and the wedding cake is no different. Before there was cake as we know it, weddings were celebrated with unsweetened bread. In medieval times, this bread was made from wheat flour and water and was thrown at the bride during the ceremony to encourage fertility. In Russia today, wedding bread called karavay is still a center piece of weddings and is thought to represent fertility.

During Roman times, the bread evolved into a loaf of barley bread. The groom would take a bite of the loaf and then hold the remainder of the bread over the bride's head and break it showering her with crumbs. Crumbs falling from her head were thought to be good luck, but this practice also carried with it a reminder of the man's dominant role over the woman. It also marked the end of her virginal state. Guests in the meantime scrambled to pick up any pieces that fell to the floor to get a bit of that good luck for themselves.

Bride's Pie in wedding cake history

By the 17^th century, the barley loaf was replaced with what was called the "Brides Pie." It was a mince or mutton pie made with sweetbreads. Just to be clear, sweetbreads are not sweet. It's a name given to organ meat that comes from the thymus gland and pancreas. Each pie contained a glass ring in it, and the lady who found the ring in her piece of pie was believed to be the next to marry.

The first sweet wedding cake was a flat one tier plum cake.

Sweet brides cakes

In the 18th century, it was common to have to two white cakes. The groom's cake and the bride's cake. Guests most often ate the groom’s cake, and left the bride’s cake untouched to be saved in a tin of alcohol to be eaten on each wedding anniversary.

Finally, in the 19^th century, sweet cakes emerged as the confection for wedding celebrations. They weren't anything elaborate like what we see today but were normally just a flat one tier plum cake with white icing. This cake was served but not eaten at the reception. Instead it was cut and boxed for guests to take with them when they left the reception. It was thought that if the bridesmaid slept with a piece of cake under her pillow she would dream of her future husband. (Don't ask me how they slept with plum cake under their pillow. What a mess!)

Cake became the preferred confection for wedding celebrations, but it didn't break in half like the bread and so the tradition changed. The cake was sliced on a table. Guests no longer scrounged about on the floor for a lucky crumb, but could now stand in line and be served a tiny morsel of luck which the bride passed through her wedding ring into their hands.

“It's a great cake. A bride-cake. Mine!”

It was in Victorian times that wedding cake as we know it today started to be popular. It was at this time that the first white wedding cakes covered in white icing appeared. By this time, white had become the color that represented purity. However, they weren't called wedding cakes yet. Instead, they were known as the "bride's cake" with the bride elevated as the focal figure at the wedding. Charles Dickens' used this term in Great Expectations which was written in 1861 when describing Miss Havisham's wedding cake.

History of tiered wedding cakes

Tiered wedding cakes are a custom that developed from a game that had the bride and groom attempting to kiss over a higher and higher cake without knocking it over.

Today's couples have endless choices when it comes to wedding cakes. Instead of the traditional white cake, today's wedding cakes can be any flavor or a combination of flavors and can even be color-coordinated with the theme of the wedding.

Cutting wedding cake tradition

The cutting of the cake is also a wedding tradition and is something the bride and groom do together (at least the first slice), and this said to represent a promise to each other to always be there to help one another. Then traditionally, they each feed one another from that first slice which represents their willingness to provide for one another throughout life. Then there's the practice of smashing that cake all over each other's faces, but that's a story for another time.

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Friday, October 9, 2015

History of wedding cake toppers

If I say wedding cake topper, what do you picture? It might be a miniature bride and groom, wedding bells or some other similar ornamentation with a wedding theme. While the history of wedding cakes dates back to the Roman Empire, it was nothing like wedding cakes as we know them today. Instead they were unsweetened loaves of bread which were crumbled over the bride for good luck. And wedding cake toppers as we know them haven't been around all that long either. They became a growing trend with middle class and affluent American families before the American Civil War. By the 1890s, they were quite common.

Those original wedding cake toppers weren't anything extravagant. Cakes were decorated with things like flowers, bells, or other small objects related to the bride and groom. Often these toppers were handmade by a family member or a professional wedding cake baker using frosting, icing, or non-edible materials like plaster of Paris.

Wedding cake toppers popular after World War I

Decorative cake toppers grew more popular after World War I. It was in the Roaring 20s that High Society in the U.S. adopted the custom of using figurines of the bride and groom atop the wedding cake. Popularity of this tradition grew quickly after Emily Post, American etiquette expert, mentioned them in her 1922 best seller that said, "wedding cake is an essential of every wedding reception," and went on to comment on the placement of the bride and groom figurines in the description of a beautifully decorated cake. In the early 1900s wedding cake toppers were made from glass, paper, or wood until they started being commercially made.

First commercially made wedding cake toppers

Along with this, American retailers like Sears & Roebuck started to market and sell cake toppers showcasing a bride and groom. By 1924 you could find an assortment of two-inch tall bride and groom toppers made from wax and featuring differences like groom without a hat or wearing a top hat. The bride could be purchased without a veil or wearing a cloth veil. By 1927, the Sears catalog had an entire page devoted to wedding cake ornaments.

With their growing popularity, wedding cake toppers started to be mass produced commercially in the U.S., Europe and Asia. They were available in the usual bride and groom side-by-side pose along with a selection of alternative poses. And during or following the War, the groom was sometimes depicted wearing a military uniform. Along with this, groom figurines could also be purchased a wearing police or fireman uniform, too.

Sparkling Love Cake Topper

Aside from bride and groom figurines, today we have toppers like cupids, hearts, love birds and sometimes even a framed picture of the couple. The tradition of adding a decorative ornament topper to the wedding cake has been joined with the tradition of removing and saving the memento as well as freezing the top layer of the cake to be eaten by the bride and groom on their first anniversary.

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Photo credits: Vintage Wedding Cake Topper, Fancy Flowers, futuremrsbeede

Monday, June 12, 2023

3 Victorian wedding cake traditions

In Victorian times, the wedding ceremony look very much like weddings today. Most often, it took place at the bride's parish church decorated with flower. Wedding bells rang out announcing the union, and the newlyweds signed the parish register. Queen Victoria started a new wedding cake tradition when she married Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha in 1840. The cake consisted of three tiers of English plum cake and it was big. While only 14 inches tall, is measured almost 10 feet across, and weighed 300 pounds. At this time the more refined and whiter sugars were still quite expensive. Only wealthy families could afford to decorate with pure white frosting and exhibited the wealth and the social status of the family. When Queen Victoria used white icing on her wedding cake it gained a new title, royal icing.

Aside from all the similarities, in Victorian times they celebrated weddings with three different cakes:

groom’s cake
the bride’s cake
the wedding cake

They also celebrated a tradition known as the cake pull.

Traditional groom’s cake

The groom's cake tradition originated in Victorian England. The earliest groom's cakes were dark, heavy fruitcakes made by the groomsmen and eaten by the groomsmen on the wedding day, with at least a portion saved to be sliced, boxed, and handed out to the single women in attendance. Those women slept with the cake under their pillows to help them dream of their future husbands.

Traditional bride’s cake

The bride’s cake was usually a simple pound cake with white icing which symbolized her virginity. This cake was served to the bridesmaids.

Wedding cake pull

The wedding cake pull originally known as the ribbon pull is a quaint bridesmaids' ritual dating back to the Victorian era. Back then it took place at the wedding reception; today it is usually part of the bridal shower. The bride attached tiny silver charms of fortune to ribbon (similar to the pudding cake charms once hidden in plum pudding at Christmas), and placed them under the wedding cake or between layers. Just before cutting the cake, her single friends were invited to pull one of the ribbons to learn their fortune. Historically, there were charms, each with their own meaning.