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If you didn't have to think about the cost of your cake, what would you have? Would you have a cake made of Belgian chocolates and imported liqueurs? Exquisite French lemon cream? Surely you'd want it to be an edible work of art, right? For these requirements, and many more, look to Wildflowers by Lori wedding cakes.

Wildflowers cakes are made of nothing but the absolute finest natural ingredients, meaning that your lemon cake is flavored with real lemon, and that your chocolate icing is made of the very best chocolate. There are so many options to choose from that we can't imagine how you'd choose just one.

Aside from being delicious, the cakes are absolutely exquisite. The designs range from realistic to whimsical, full of color and texture and beauty. But, of course, for all of this you're going to pay a pretty penny -- they're priced from $12 a serving.

From the ever-helpful people at The Kitchen comes this list of five important considerations when planning your reception menu. Whether you're doing it yourself, or planning with a caterer, whether you're having a dessert buffet or a sit-down, three-course dinner, these factors will apply.

1. Seasonality. Foods that are in season are less expensive and easier to find. Seasonal dishes make sense to your guests, too: people prefer lighter fare in hot weather, comfort food in cold.

2. Variety. Even if you're having a dessert buffet, as are the writers at The Kitchen, you can still provide variety in taste, texture, temperature, and color. With a less focused menu comes opportunity for even greater variety.

Novelty cakes are nothing new but to find a baker who consistently does it really well isn't always easy. There are so many design elements in a novelty cake that it must be really neatly executed, otherwise it runs the risk of looking shoddy and amateurish. That's why we are so pleased to have found Dragons and Daffodils Cakes, a Welsh bakery that produces wonderful novelty cakes and figurines.

One of the quirkiest figurines they make are sheep. Yes, amazingly, sheep, which are apparently much-loved by Welsh brides and grooms living abroad and wanting a little touch of home at their wedding. The sheep can be used as cake toppers, or as pillars to support each cake tier. Whichever way, they are a lot of fun and quite adorable. Other figurines include Welsh dragons, mice and rabbits and enormously cute miniature bride and groom replicas.

Our favourite designs, however, are the amazing luggage and parcel cakes. Loads of fun, they must make an amazing focal point at any wedding. We like the clean, simple design of the cakes, which allows the figurines to shine and tell the story.

If you want to find out more about ordering one of these fabulous cakes, please read their order info page here.

Your eyes keep shifting between your budget spreadsheet and your potential guest list. You love your friends and family -- all 250 of them -- but at 35 bucks a head for dinner, you can't afford to invite them all. You could save thousands of dollars by cutting your guest list in half, but how do you decide who makes and who misses the cut? This part of wedding planning is no fun.

So here's an idea: instead of an expensive, fancy feast that blows your whole wedding budget, ask your guests to bring a dish to share instead of a gift. Provide guests who travel or guests who simply don't cook with a list of pre-made items that can be bought at your local grocery store, and appoint someone to field all the phone calls about what to bring. Sure there will be some repeats, but with several dozen guests, you'll surely get a nice variety for your buffet.

Make sure your invitations are clear about this. "In lieu of gifts, the bride and groom request that you bring your favorite dish to serve at our reception buffet. Call Mandy, the Maid of Honor, at 555-5555 with questions." Then you can take the money you saved on food and buy your own wedding gifts, so you get exactly what you need and want. Encourage guests to include the recipe with the dish they bring, so that you can create a wedding cookbook. You can even post the recipes online to share with all the guests.

Iced cookies are currently a big favor favourite with many brides and, although they come in all sorts of shapes and colours, it can be hard to find something that's different to the usual wedding cake/shoe/dress design. It does exist though. For something a little bit edgier, a little bit funkier, with a lot more pizazz, try the cookies from Whipped Bakeshop.

What makes these cookies so special is that they aren't decorated with standard icing. They are 'hand painted', which gives them that fabulous customised, arty look. Whipped Bakeshop is run by Zoë Lukas, who is both a baker and a painter, and she has pulled these two talents together to create these little masterpieces. A real marriage of art and food.

If you don't live in Philadelphia you can still order these cookies as Whipped Bakeshop delivers throughout the USA. Custom cookies are priced from $3.50 each, excluding delivery/shipping costs.

Fabulous favors indeed.

This is a very simple, yet striking cake topper. Not your traditional bride and groom, nor even a monograph, these delectable crystals hang suspended and glittering over your cake, catching the eye as they catch the light.

These drops are sold in a set of nine. You can place them all in the top layer, as shown in the picture, or you could set them at varying levels on a tiered cake.

They would also be very simple to make. A light to moderate gauge of wire, a pair of wire cutters and needle-nose pliers, and a handful of crystals in your choice of colors and sizes, and a reasonably steady hand, and you could have a set of these made in less than half an hour. Stunning!

If you're interested in more information on the crystal cake toppers shown, contact SavvySneaks.com.

We confess to being just a little dubious about this. We can see the temptation, however. Receptions eat up (no pun intended) a huge percentage of your wedding costs. If you're working with a very tight budget, those costs may well be something you'd like to reduce. Is it realistic to self-cater?

It would depend a lot on the size and formality of the wedding, of course. Catering your own formal sit-down four-course banquet for 300 guests? We can't imagine how you'd manage that. A simple cold buffet for 30? That could be do-able.

The trick is liable to be in spreading out the work. Most people have family or friends who love to cook. Maybe you could organize a reception pot-luck for your casual wedding. In that case, you're likely not going to be doing much of the food preparation yourselves, but instead be organizing the people who will be bringing the food. What do you think? Could the couple organize their own catering, or is this one wedding task that really should be left to the professionals?

Flowers on wedding cakes? Tell us something new. Since as far back as we can remember, wedding cakes with floral decorations have been the norm. So why get excited about yet more flowers on cakes?

Because these are so cool and sharp and funky that they can't be ignored.

Cake designers nowadays are constantly looking for new ways to create confectionery masterpieces, and floral embellishments have undergone a major overhaul but mostly, as lovely as they all are, there hasn't been anything terribly contemporary and sharp. Until recently, that is.

Emerging from the pastel prettiness are some rather bold, modern and somewhat retro flower designs that get a huge thumbs up from us. Designers and bakers such as Bijoux Doux, Maisie Fantaisie, Sugar-Couture, I Dream Of Cake, Jim Smeal and Lovin Sullivan Cakes never fail to deliver on interesting designs and we simply love their contemporary takes on florals.

Check out the gallery and you'll see what we mean!

An obvious place for a kitchen-savvy bride (or groom!) to save a chunk of wedding money is on the cake. The DIY version is going to be substantially less expensive than one made by a professional. Of course, you have to be pretty confident that yours will look as good -- or maybe you're of the mindset that a cake should look like a cake, not a piece of edible sculpture or avant-garde architecture.

Whatever your approach, you'll have to start with cake batter. Will you make your own (the famous "scratch cake"), or will you use a mix? This is completely a matter of personal taste, of course. Various factors to consider are health or allergy issues, consistency of mix, how long it takes to make, how long it will last, cost, ingredients, etc.

In the end, though, your decision will probably be a sentimental one. You'll choose the scratch cake recipe that grandma always made for you, or your fiancé's father's favorite flavor of cake mix. Whichever you choose, so long as it tastes good, you know your guests will be happy!

We've talked about the wedding cupcake as an option to the traditional wedding cake before. We've even shown you some nice cupcake cups to hold them beautifully. But what do you do with 300 cupcakes when you can't find a cupcake stand that will hold more than sixty?

Well, you can buy or rent five cupcake stands, obviously. This will certainly help prevent congestion around the cake table. You could instead simply have the cupcakes distributed to the tables direct from the kitchen. Or you could take the route chosen by one enterprising bride, and create a cupcake tree of more than life-size dimensions!

This amazing tree is well over six feet (2 m) tall. The tiers are made from fiberboard, the dividers between from Styrofoam cake forms. A curtain rod runs up the middle to hold it all together, and the entire tree is set upon a Christmas tree stand. For more details and pictures, check out the post on Craftster.

via: DIYLife

An outdoor event, whether shower, luncheon, or actual wedding reception, calls for specialized service. We love the simplicity and practicality of this item. It's not hugely fancy -- nor hugely expensive! -- but it works.

There's a compartment below for ice, and three trays above for different foods. The upper trays are vented so the cold can reach them better, and lidded to keep the cool in and the insects out. It allows for easy transportation of food, for hygiene, and for reasonable temperature control. Oh, and it revolves, too!

Though the tray is cited as a means to keep things cool, we wonder if a little hot water in the bottom woudn't help keep warm things warm, too? Simple and practical, and won't break the bank. If you're interested in this revolving serving tray, check it out at Wrapables.com.

Here's a fun twist on the traditional cake. This is a pretty unexceptional wedding cake: four round tiers, nothing unusual there. The colors could easily be changed to match any wedding, and the decorations of flowers and pearls are not unusual.

It would be a pretty, but not exceptional cake, except for the obvious: all those words! A cake decorated with words and phrases, like this one by Manassas Cakery offers great range for personalization and creativity. That date at the top: is it the date of the wedding, the date of their engagement, the date of their first kiss?

"Singing in the Rain": What does that refer to? We bet it probably has special meaning to Maggie and Steve! We love this idea. What a simple way to add an enormous range of creative, quirky, fun, romantic, meaningful potential to a simple cake!

According to the Bridal Association of America, the average wedding cake costs almost $550. Most bakers charge by the slice, at about $5 or $6 per slice for a standard multi-tiered cake. Premium cakes may cost twice that much, or more -- more than you'd pay for original artwork, and you're only going to have it on display for an hour or two. Wow.

One way to save costs is to cut the cake right out of the budget. But who wants to do away with such a delicious tradition? More and more couples are pulling a sneaky bait and switch when it comes to their cakes -- using a fake cake for the display, usually made of styrofoam, and serving guests from a sheet cake they keep hidden in the back, which may cost less than a dollar per serving. Guests never have to know.

You can get special "cakes" designed just for this ruse, which come with a small concealed compartment where you can hide a real piece of cake for the traditional cake cutting ceremony. It sounds a little silly, but you'll get the last laugh when you don't have to write a three- or four-digit check to your bakery.

The cake diva seems more like a cake wizard to me. She can make anything into a cake. These ideas are perfect for creating a groom's cake that reflect your guy's unique interests. Does your guy like cars? How about a car cake? Does he like sports? Get a stadium cake. Books, dogs, buildings, musical instruments...you can have it as a cake. I have always been awed by people who can make cakes in all kinds of fantastic shapes. It's pure magic to look at and to eat (if you can bring yourself to cut them). The cake diva works out of Jackson, Mississippi and if you're interested in any of these creations, or an anything-else cake, visit her website.

The perfect touch for your Renaissance or fairy-tale wedding cake. These toppers can be finished any number of ways: glossy white, iridescent white, glossy gray or brown, true-to-life castle gray, even sand-castle beige, among others. The spires and windows bring to mind images of a time long past, when knights rode to tounaments with their lady's colors flowing in ribbons from their helms.

If you want a fairy-tale touch to your Renaissance wedding, you'll love these castle toppers. The silk flowers that accent the castles could be chosen to match your color scheme, and the tulle adds that hint of mystery and romance. They didn't really do wedding cakes in the Renaissance, but why not have your modern cake with a hint of history?

For more information on these castle cake toppers, check out Celticart.com.