Cake Traditions

Your wedding cake will sit center stage of your reception table. Many will come to admire the craftsmanship it must have taken to create such a fabulous looking cake. You'll gaze upon it remembering all the dreams you had of it before you were even engaged. However, it is not only the way the cake looks that makes it special but also the wonderful traditions that go along with it.

One such tradition is the shared cutting of the cake and the bride and groom feeding each other. It was once thought that if the newlywed couple did not hold hands and share in the cutting of the cake that they would be doomed to be childless. Thus, the cutting of the cake together will insure fertility supposedly. Today, couples cut the first slice to signify the sharing of their lives together. The actual act of the bride and the groom feeding each other their wedding cake dates back to the Ancient Greeks. The Greeks would bake a cake for the bride and the groom made out of honey and sesame seeds. This cake would only be eaten by the couple and it symbolized the new bond that was created between them. Also, the sesame seeds were considered a sign of fruitfulness, so that the more the couple ate on their wedding day the more fertile they would be and have many children.

Another wedding cake tradition is the baking of the wedding cake. It is believed to be very bad luck for a bride to bake her own wedding cake. Nowadays, that is not so much a problem seeing that most cakes are made by a cake decorator or a close relative. However, if you are superstitious and your planning to bake your own cake, please reconsider.

The traditional wedding cake has three-tiers because long ago its shape was based on the unusual shape of the spire of the Saint Bride's Church in London. Originally, the wedding cake was not a large cake at all but many smaller wheat cakes that were not eaten. Instead the wedding guests would take these wheat cakes and crumble them over the bride and groom's heads for good luck and fertility.

Yet another tradition is the eating of the cake by the guests. It is believed that the newlywed couple will have good fortune if every guest at least eats a crumb of the wedding cake.

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