Wedding Cakes with Sugar Flowers

Wedding cakes and sugar flowers have gone hand in hand since the beginning of weddings.

Long before cake decorators began putting fresh flowers on wedding cakes, it was sugar flowers you’d find adorning the tiers. Look at this wedding cake from Princess Diana’s wedding to King Charles – a classic example of a 1980’s wedding cake.

What are sugar flowers?

Sugar flowers are flowers that have been handmade from a soft and pliable sugar dough. Though classed as edible, you’d probably not want to eat them as they are extremely firm when they are dry. They are thought of as a more traditional decoration to a cake, as fresh flowers are the more common option in the present day. Almost in the way that fondant is thought of as traditional in comparison with buttercream cakes, sugar flowers are less requested today than they used to be. This is a great shame!

Just like everything else wedding related, we’ve come a long way since the dawn of sugar flowers. Historically, sugar flowers were pretty, but they didn’t look very realistic, and could often be described as “clunky”. There also weren’t a lot of options. If you look at wedding cakes from the 1980’s, you’ll see that most of the sugar flowers on wedding cakes were roses or cala lilies. Most brides today would find these options rather limiting, opting to forgo sugar flowers in favour of their fresh counterparts.

Now, if you have a look through my gallery, you’ll see I love a fresh flower and buttercream combination just as much as anyone else, however I think there are many unique benefits to handmade flowers, which I hope to share with you in this post.

1. Sugar Flowers are Always Food Safe

If you have any interest at all in wedding cakes, you’ll see it’s a huge trend on TikTok or Instagram to create content about which fresh flowers should or should not be used on cakes. Baby’s breath, though very popular for UK weddings, are toxic. This can be quite disheartening for some couples, who love how they look on cakes. Unfortunately, the list of toxic flowers includes some very loved and beautiful variants, like Dahlia, Larkspur, Hydrangea and Anthuriums. The work around for this is simple – make them out of sugar and you never have to worry! When the flowers are created out of gum paste or wafer paper, there is no concern for the toxicity of the cake, so you can have whichever flowers you’d like!

2. Sugar Flowers Make a Cake Truly Bespoke

Sugar flowers are made petal by petal and fashioned together in such a way, that every petal, and thus flower is unique. This means no other wedding cake is likely to look like the one created just for you. With fresh flowers, the colours of your wedding will dictate the selection of flowers you will be able to use. Usually this poses no problem whatsoever. However, for colour schemes such as powder blue or turquoise, you will have a difficult time finding flowers in these colours. Having your flowers hand made mean that there is literally no limit to what could be created. You’d be very unlikely to find fresh, deep purple peonies, but can they be made out of sugar? Yes! Absolutely!

3. Lasting Beauty

One of the most striking aspects of sugar flowers is the fact that they last long after the wedding is over. One of the sweetest items of memorabilia I’ve ever seen is an arrangement of sugar flowers from a beloved couple’s wedding cake on display in a living room cabinet. I’ve also seen them encapsulated in framed keepsake boxes and put on display in various places, too.

4. Flowers for All Weather Conditions

Though we’re in the UK, we really have been having extremely hot days in the Summer. By the time July and August come around, hot weather contingency plans are put in place and there are a lot of practicalities we put in place to make sure cakes last as long as they should! Buttercream and fresh flowers are susceptible to the heat, and though I’ve never had a problem, with either of those, sugar flowers give great peace of mind. They certainly won’t droop or melt, nor fall to pieces in hot or cold weather.

5. A Stunning Aesthetic

Sugar flowers are wonderfully beautiful creations. As mentioned earlier, we’ve come a long way since the dawn of sugar flowers. I have spent years perfecting them to look aesthetically pleasing and using them to bring the best out of a cake’s potential. They take true artistic skill and the right cake designer will know how to create and use them to wow your guests and create a cake that will leave you in awe.

6. Wafer Paper Flowers

Wafer paper flowers are like the new kid on the block when it comes to sugar flowers. Made from thin sheets of edible wafer paper, the flowers possess all the wonderful qualities of sugar flowers and more! They are lightweight, quicker to make, thus less expensive and ethereally beautiful. They play with lights and shadows adding depth and romance to a cake in a way that other materials cannot. Wafer paper flowers are my new favourite medium and I look forward to creating many more wafer paper cakes in 2025!