One of the smaller lines on the budget, and one of the few where the venue charges you to serve what you already bought.
The Knot’s 2026 average for a wedding cake. Priced by the slice, most 100-guest cakes land between $500 and $800.
Zola puts cakes and desserts at $917 on average, which includes dessert tables and late-night sweets alongside the cake itself. Budget designs run $300 to $400 and elaborate custom work from a known cake artist can pass $2,000 for the same number of servings.
By the slice, then adjusted for everything else. Most bakers quote $5 to $8 per serving for a standard design, which puts a 100-guest cake at $500 to $800. Simple buttercream sits at the low end. Fondant, hand-piped detail, sugar flowers and structural tiers push it up quickly, and a five-tier cake with hand-made sugar florals can serve the same hundred people for four times the money.
What moves the per-slice number:
Delivery and setup runs $50 to $150. Most venues charge a cutting fee of $1 to $3 per slice for a cake from an outside bakery, which adds $100 to $300 at a hundred guests. Some waive it if you use their preferred baker. Ask both the venue and the bakery before you book either.
A common and sensible move: order a smaller decorated cake for the cutting photograph, plus plain sheet cakes from the same baker for actual serving. Guests eat the same recipe, you get the same photograph, and you pay decoration cost on two tiers instead of five. Most bakers will suggest it themselves if you tell them your budget.
The order
The cake itself
Tastings and transport are where this goes right or wrong.
Ask whether it is free, credited against the order, or charged, and whether you taste the actual flavors you are considering or a fixed selection. Bring your color palette and a photo of the room. Bakers design to a setting, not just to a sketch.
Buttercream in an August outdoor reception is a genuine engineering problem. Swiss and Italian meringue buttercreams hold better than American; fondant holds better still but tastes different. A baker who asks where the cake will sit and for how long is thinking about the right thing.
Who transports it, who assembles it on site, what time it arrives, where it sits until cutting, and who supplies the stand. A cake that sits in afternoon sun for three hours will not survive to the photograph.
Six to nine months for a popular baker, three to six months elsewhere, with final design and flavors usually locked four to six weeks out. Ask whether the design is guaranteed or an approximation, and whether the person you met is the person decorating.
We are building this market by market, and a city page goes live only once it holds enough real bakers to be worth your time. Two listings is not a directory, so until it is useful it stays closed.
Roughly $5 to $8 per slice, which puts a 100-guest cake at $500 to $800. Budget designs run $300 to $400 and elaborate custom work can exceed $2,000.
A venue charge of $1 to $3 per slice to cut, plate and serve a cake from an outside bakery. At 100 guests that is $100 to $300. Some venues waive it for their preferred bakers.
Order a smaller decorated cake for the cutting photograph and plain sheet cakes from the same baker for serving. Same recipe, same photograph, decoration cost on far fewer tiers.
Buttercream tastes better to most people and costs less. Fondant gives a smoother finish and holds up better in heat. Swiss and Italian meringue buttercreams sit between the two on durability.
Six to nine months out for a sought-after baker, three to six months otherwise, with the final design and flavors usually confirmed four to six weeks before the wedding.
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