Money and Marketing / Wedding Cakes

I haven't had much call for groom's cakes. I did one in which it was the dessert for the rehearsal dinner the night before. That was fun. TONS of chocolate! I estimated that I'd used at least 10# of chocolate in the whole thing. Chocolate chiffon with chocolate mousse iced and then poured with ganache and topped with chocolate curls! Yikes!
I mostly do only buttercream cakes too. I've had very few requests for fondant. I've found that for making the sides nice and smooth on a BC cake the flat side of one of those plastic bowl scraper things works great. I've got two that I ONLY use for wedding cakes because once they get nicked, they'll leave marks. Luckily they're only like 50 cents each.
You mention that you're having trouble finding nice pictures. What about pics of your own cakes? I only show pics of cakes I've done (which means for a long time I did only a lot of basketweave and cornelli lace! LOL)

My own cakes are the ones that I can't get good pictures of! Not enough light, background, ...I am not a professional photographer. I suppose the pictures aren't too bad..but I want some professional looking shots. I show brides these as well as favorites from books etc. that I have collected - it stimulates the creative process. I get a good idea of what they like and design each cake according to their tastes. Did you tell me what you charge and how you market yourself? That's the password in the thread

[Dominique]

I charge a minimum of $4.50 a person and it goes up from there. I don't really market myself, I do all the cakes here at the hotel where I work.
For the most part, all the outside cakes I've done, I got through my mother bragging about her daughter the pastry chef! LOL (I do charge a bit less for those since they're usually daughters of friends of my mother.)LOL

[LoriB]

Thanks Dominique! Good Ol' Mom! I'm still totally confused by the new smile stuff at the bottom, so I lost my train of thought......

I have always found it best to choose a pro to perform any task at its best. Thus, if I wanted good pictures of anything, I would choose a pro. If it was food, then I would choose a photographer that was a pro at taking picture of food. Going with a good pro is often the least expensive and most effective way of doing it.