Cheap Wedding Cake?

We want a 3 tier fruit cake at our wedding, but the cheapest we can find is Marks and Spencer’s for £115. Apart from getting someone to make it for us - which we don’t want to risk in case it looks or tastes bad, is there anywhere else you know of that we can get a cake from?

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Ask the expert

Answer:

I recently did a bit research into this and I found that Marks and Spencer were by far the best value wedding cakes around. The problem with rich fruit cake is the cost of the ingredients. Even if you were to make it yourself, you’ll find that the ingredients are quite expensive – especially if you buy quality ingredients.

If you’re happy to think outside the box a bit, then why not try normal fruit cakes. You can often find these in the big stores’ bakery departments. Most of the big supermarkets stock them, including Marks and Spencer. They’ll also come in different sizes, so you could make up three tiers – although they probably won’t be quite as big or as rich as the proper wedding cake.

These types of cakes often have just icing on them, so you’ll need to decorate it yourself. A bit of ribbon and some fresh flowers will do the trick.

Tesco have a large, medium and small Rich Fruit Celebration Cake and the total cost for all three would be £28.81* – but I’ve only seen them on their website, it doesn’t say how big they are and I’ve never tasted them! (That’s quite a big disclaimer). They come on a silver foil cake board, ready to be decorated and they look alright.



Asda also do a wedding cake, similar to Tesco. Again, I’ve not tried it and the guide sizes look small, but it’s worth a try. It’s called ASDA Extra Special wedding cake and it comes in three sizes, totalling £27.94*

Choosing either of these will save you a fortune and you’d still have cash left over to try the cake before you buy it for the wedding. One thing I would say is, the cakes do look small, so think about getting a bit extra that you can cut on the day to make sure you have enough to go around.

Finally, to end on a bit of a funny note, I found a video about a cheap wedding cake the other day (sorry for the language!).





I hope that helps.




*Price checked on 29 February 2008. This may go up as well as down!