50 Great Wedding Cakes

Wedding Cake at Elizabeth and Barton's Reception

This six-tiered cake, covered with buttercream, had fresh-blueberry and white-chocolate buttercream filling.

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50 Great Wedding Cakes

Hydrangea Wedding Cake

This fondant-covered cake decorated with hydrangeas is made of three graduated square tiers.

50 Great Wedding Cakes

A Wedding Cake with Different Stripes

Here, we put the notion of icing on ice, relying instead on unadorned pastel layers for graphic appeal. Coconut pound cake, tinted with gel-paste food coloring, serves as the foundation, while white fondant and passion-fruit curd rests on top (the curd is also between each layer).

50 Great Wedding Cakes

White Chocolate Tower Wedding Cake

Tightly curled tempered-white-chocolate cigarettes create a fortress of three cake layers, which are topped with golden raspberries. A sifting of powdered sugar keeps the raspberries in the color theme.

50 Great Wedding Cakes

Cupcake Tower

Homespun white cupcakes are crowned with fondant hearts cut with a cookie cutter and imprinted with the bride's and groom's first initials using a new rubber stamp.

50 Great Wedding Cakes

Asian-Inspired Wave Wedding Cake

On each tier of this modern creation by Wendy Kromer, a different wave design (three in all, impressed with double-thick rubber stamps) graces the fondant panels. Every panel is bordered in bamboo also made of fondant. Under the icing, a swirly vanilla-and-mocha marble cake is in keeping with the theme. The wooden cake board, edged in pieces of real bamboo, mimics the shape and look of the cake.

50 Great Wedding Cakes

Boites Roses Wedding Cake

Fauchon's monogrammed pink pastry boxes, or boites roses, are interpreted in tinted white chocolate; the cake itself is vanilla sponge with strawberry syrup and mousse. Almond macaroons in raspberry, chocolate, pistachio, and passion fruit are piled on and around the tiers.

50 Great Wedding Cakes

Wedding Cake at Jeanette and Nick's Reception

Two tiers of the cake, by Elizabeth Loudon, are made with the mother of the bride's chocolate cake recipe. Set on a stand trimmed with felt, the confection is covered with bittersweet chocolate frosting and dressed with roses, fiddleheads, and sandersonia.

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50 Great Wedding Cakes

Wedding Cake and Treats at Melinda and Jesse's Reception

A dessert buffet was created by Jesse's aunt, who is a pastry chef. Handmade paper parasols on wooden skewers make the sweets even more festive.

50 Great Wedding Cakes

A French Confections Wedding Cake

A majestic design turns a bit coquettish when it's festooned with macaroons -- the quintessential French treats -- and dressed up in flirty pink.

50 Great Wedding Cakes

Devil's Food Wedding Cake

The classic American layer cake is dressed up with geraniums for an informal wedding.

50 Great Wedding Cakes

Miniature Wedding Cakes

Simple designs, like the luscious buttercream blooms atop these tiny cakes, can make a big impression. Just three inches high, these beauties could be the highlight of a dessert buffet or served at each place.

50 Great Wedding Cakes

Wedding Cupcakes at Robin and Matt's Reception

Fondant wafers, rubber-stamped with hearts, starbursts, monograms, and exclamation points, top each cupcake.

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50 Great Wedding Cakes

Delicate Dotted Petals Wedding Cake

A graphic embellishment is all the more striking against rich, chocolate-brown fondant. These royal icing designs, piped in white and light-brown dots, echo the petal shape of the cake tiers and stand. A pattern was first pinpricked into the fondant and then piped over. The cascading design on the top tier forms an intricate, many-petaled flower -- an understated alternative to a cake topper.

50 Great Wedding Cakes

Parrot-Tulip Wedding Cake Quartet

Four buttercream cubes topped with brilliant parrot tulips glow with color; every cluster picks up a hue from the one next to it. To prevent marring the soft icing, the blooms are arranged on clear acetate sheets.

50 Great Wedding Cakes

Basket of Berries Wedding Cake

Early summer is the best time to choose a cake like this one -- brimming with a fresh and varied assortment of the season's best berries.

50 Great Wedding Cakes

Chocolate Faux Bois Wedding Cake

Faux bois, French for "fake wood," is a lovely decorative motif. A wood-graining tool creates the white chocolate markings on bittersweet chocolate panels; they're then pressed into the chocolate ganache that envelopes the cake.

50 Great Wedding Cakes

Darcy Miller's Wedding Cake

The focal point is the nine-tier wedding cake, modeled, as the ketuba was, after a Parisian bakery box.

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50 Great Wedding Cakes

Garden of Sweet Delights Wedding Cake

Against white fondant, a wreath of flowers -- among them, fringed nerines and primula in pink, tiny yellow kalanchoe, and papery sweet peas -- is even more glorious.

50 Great Wedding Cakes

Marbelized Wedding Cake

Call it a novel idea -- this colorful cake evokes marbled endpapers. The pattern is done in aqua-tinted white chocolate using chocolate transfer sheets applied to buttercream. The treat inside combines moist dark-chocolate cake, dark-chocolate ganache, and semisweet- and white-chocolate buttercreams.

50 Great Wedding Cakes

Wedding Cake at Christina and Peter's Reception

An embossed outer layer of Valrhona white chocolate covers a coating of white-chocolate buttercream. The baker used organic ingredients to create two flavors for the cake layers inside: chocolate butter cake filled with an espresso Bavarian cream, and lemon pound cake filled with lemon sabayon.

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50 Great Wedding Cakes

French Charlotte Wedding Cake

This one-of-a-kind cake is ideal for a beach wedding. The lemon-flavored cookie-like tea cakes are tied around buttercream tiers with gold ribbon -- every other one finished with a bow.

50 Great Wedding Cakes

Lustreware Wedding Cake

The sweet, shimmery details of lustreware plates were typically painted in silver, copper, and pink. The playful motifs encircling the tops of the four tiers of this cake were created with powdered food coloring and a sable paintbrush.

50 Great Wedding Cakes

Cherry Almond Wedding Cake

Cherries and almonds are close botanical relatives, and they're famously compatible in desserts. Here, they meld lusciously in a three-tier cake cloaked in marzipan (a sweet almond paste) and scattered with marzipan cherries. Sour-cherry jam and buttercream top layers made with ground almonds.

50 Great Wedding Cakes

Croquembouche Wedding Cake

This towering confection is the traditional wedding cake of France. The name croquembouche, which means "crunch in the mouth," refers to the hard caramel that coats delicate puffs of pate a choux filled with vanilla cream. The top tier rests on an edible nougatine base, made of caramel and crushed almonds. The roses and ribbons are pastillage, a sugar paste that dries with a porcelain-like finish; the giant swirls are pulled sugar.

50 Great Wedding Cakes

Modern Damask Wedding Cake

Textiles -- whether found in upholstery or clothing -- are a rich resource for colors, patterns, and textures appropriate for this celebratory treat. Here, Kromer used a set of stencils to give royal icing on fondant-covered layers the look of old-world damask. The fresh color palette and the modern way the cake sits flush with the edges of its acrylic cake board shake up the ornate look.

50 Great Wedding Cakes

Wedding Cake at Maria and Robert's Reception

Instead of one large wedding cake, Maria and Robert offered a number of choices for their guests. The main cake was a square layered tiramisu decorated with Lady apples dipped in either caramel or chocolate. Other baked delights included a chocolate sour-cream pound cake with raspberry filling and chocolate ganache frosting, miniature cupcakes with apricot filling and topping, and a round layered spice cake with cream-cheese frosting. Hand-painted, calligraphed signs listed the names of the desserts.

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50 Great Wedding Cakes

Transferware Wedding Cake

The 19th-century English pottery that inspired this cake was known for intricate scenes and border patterns. Here, a border detail is repeatedly piped in chocolate.

50 Great Wedding Cakes

The Gold Standard Wedding Cake

Even the subtlest application of gold has a big impact. Edible luster dust was brushed onto leaves piped from royal icing and left to harden. The gilt foliage is attached to the untinted buttercream along with similarly dusted pearl dragees. Gold trimmming edges the porcelain stand.

50 Great Wedding Cakes

Wedding Cupcakes at Anna and Mason's Reception

Glittering cupcakes -- carrot cake with cream-cheese frosting, white cake with lemon Swiss-meringue buttercream, all toppped with edible gold dust and leaf -- are served in lieu of a cake.

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50 Great Wedding Cakes

Red Rose Wedding Cake

A pristine white cake, piped with tiny beads around each tier, is sprinkled with a flutter of red rose petals.

50 Great Wedding Cakes

Photo Wedding Cake

This cake, with an image of your smiling faces on the middle tier, is a showstopper. Dotted and floral ribbons are attached to the fondant using royal icing, pleated satin ribbon adds a ruffly effect atop two tiers, and an oval in the same trim neatly outlines your image. We cut the picture (which was printed on an ink-jet printer) to size, and glued it on with royal icing.

50 Great Wedding Cakes

Stenciled Monogram Wedding Cakes

Take a look at the stenciled chocolate cakes here, in which powdered cocoa forms a monogram on each glazed surface.

50 Great Wedding Cakes

Ribbon Rose Wedding Cake

A cascade of 60 piped meringue flowers tumbles down a stack of rectangular tiers for the Ribbon Rose Cake -- each tier is edged in a pristine border. Each rose on this cake is piped with a single, continuous squeeze onto a flower nail and baked before being affixed to the cake with royal icing.

50 Great Wedding Cakes

Lord and Lady Baltimore Wedding Cakes

The egg yolk-based Lord Baltimore cake (right) may have been created to use leftover ingredients from the Lady Baltimore cake (left), which is egg white-based. The latter cake became popular when Owen Wister described it in his 1906 novel, Lady Baltimore.

50 Great Wedding Cakes

Applique Wedding Cake

Techniques used by dressmakers to turn fabric into flowers inspired this sophisticated cake. A combination of fondant and white chocolate both envelops the cake and decorates it. Prim buttercream dots frame the designs.

50 Great Wedding Cakes

Art Nouveau Wedding Cake

Inspired by jeweled insect pins popularized at the turn of the 20th century, this cake is concocted from royal icing, gold luster dust, and edible pearls. The enchanted-forest backdrop provides the perfect perch for a pair of delicate sugary dragonflies. They whimsically evoke the happy couple, poised to take flight.

50 Great Wedding Cakes

Grecian Wedding Cake

Made of gum-paste flowers painted with gold luster dust, the wreaths, along with the Corinthian column-inspired tiers, turn this cake into a Greek fantasy. The tiers are encircled in real ribbon and topped with a champagne coupe bubbling over with a necklace, of course.

50 Great Wedding Cakes

Victorian Wedding Cake

This elegant cake features sugary versions of the defining piece of jewelry from this period -- the cameo. They're unabashedly sentimental, especially when they bear the profiles of you and your fiance and the message "Me & Thee." Pressed into fondant using custom rubber stamps, ringed with shimmering candy pearls, and dangled from real ribbons, these adornments grace the brown-sugar marble cake with edible poetry.

50 Great Wedding Cakes

Chrysanthemum Wedding Cake

Clusters of spiky "petals" of soft meringue top the layers of this cake. The same meringue, spread smooth, covers the sides.

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50 Great Wedding Cakes

The Megeve Wedding Cake

This cake was named for a ski resort in Switzerland, the Megeve, and it resembles nothing so much as a mountain covered in chocolate curls. Under the curls rest discs of vanilla meringue layered with chocolate mousse.

50 Great Wedding Cakes

Tuxedo Wedding Cake

Pin tucks and ruffles encircle the layers of this formal cake, which resembles the bib of a classic tuxedo shirt. Tiny sugar-paste pearls, like fabric-covered buttons, punctuate the center of each frilly sugar-paste band. Ivory taffeta ribbon trims the cake board; its picot edging alludes to the black of the suit. The interior is made up of white layers filled and frosted with vanilla Swiss-meringue buttercream and then covered with fondant.

50 Great Wedding Cakes

Loose Petal Wedding Cake

Swiss meringue buttercream icing, piped through a petal tip with a slight wiggle of the wrist, is the medium for the squiggles enveloping the cake. Buttercream is soft, free form, relaxed -- and very delicious. Each buoyant, cushiony tier of this peach-tinted powder puff of a cake is almost imperceptibly elevated above the preceding layer.

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50 Great Wedding Cakes

Pleated Wedding Cake

The edible pleats here recall the crinolines beneath a cream puff of a wedding dress. White wafer papers, cut with scallop scissors and folded, were painted with gold luster dust and petal dust in pinks and greens. They were then piped with white royal icing and attached to the mint-green fondant-covered tiers with more royal icing. The fluted pastry cups, filled with pillow mints, complete the pleated theme.

50 Great Wedding Cakes

Special Delivery Wedding Cake

The fondant-covered box "lids" are the actual cake here, and the bottoms, also wrapped in fondant, are cake risers. The whole package is tied together with a taffeta ribbon, while each tier is edged with gold luster dust and matching royal-icing dots. The surrounding gumdrops, mint "lentils," sugar wafers, dragees, and pillow mints are treats you might find inside these packages, were they not made of cake.

50 Great Wedding Cakes

Woodland Wedding Cake

Tiny treasures of the woods are rendered sweetly in marzipan on an ivory marzipan-covered cake. A ladybug signifying good fortune rests on the frond of a fern; a fiddlehead with royal icing foliage uncoils overhead. Mushrooms with gum-paste stems, acorns, oak leaves, and fallen bark made of shaved chocolate further adorn the tiers.

50 Great Wedding Cakes

Calligraphy Wedding Cakes

This suite of sweets by Kromer features a graphic calligraphy-style motif and words from the classic wedding vows. The designs are incorporated into white-chocolate panels using plastic transfer sheets printed with tinted cocoa butter. The panels are then adhered to tiers evenly frosted in buttercream, which is also used to create the string-of-pearls effect on each level. Pools of raspberry sauce adorn two of the cakes. Transfer kit by American Chocolate Designs. Calligraphy by Nancy Howell.

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50 Great Wedding Cakes

Damask Wedding Cake

This opulent five-tier cake is a graphic interpretation of damask; it plays up the pattern, which is traditionally tone-on-tone. The intricate scrollwork is best suited to a square cake because the flat surfaces display the repeating motif to greatest advantage. To create this magnificent design, the pattern is placed under waxed paper, then piped over and filled in with royal icing. After it dries, the hardened frosting is removed from the waxed paper and affixed to the cake. The Wedgwood-blue fondant and dark-brown decorations look elegant with a chocolate cake.

50 Great Wedding Cakes

Eyelet Wedding Cake

This eyelet "sampler" -- with its cutouts, flowers, and pristine whiteness -- evokes summer as prettily as a billowing cotton dress. Each fondant-covered tier presents a different eyelet. The second layer is inspired by the table runner; the cake's crown by the bottom layer (which has a sugar-paste ribbon "threaded" through it). Styrofoam disks, wrapped in fondant, lift the top layers. Tiny eyelet cutters and small pastry tips were used to make the holes; the embroidered effect comes from piped royal icing. Cake by Wendy Kromer Confections, Sandusky, Ohio.