Fresh Roses and Wedding cakes

[melonrei]

Hi,

I'm looking for suggestions on the best way to arrange rings of fresh roses between wedding cake tiers. My friends is going for the cost effective wedding, and roped me into making the cake, but she doesn't want to have the florist do this. So if there are any suggestions, it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

[lfouquette]

Hi melonrei -- I'm not a professional, but I just made 2 wedding cakes last week and all went well. I used fresh flowers on a White Chocolate Italian Meringue Buttercream. If you are planning to use cake separators between the layers, you can put the flowers in the space between the layers. You'll probably want Baby's Breath or other filler flowers (mini carnations?) to completely fill the spaces. Putting the flowers in the spaces created by the separators will leave your frosting neat.

I did not use separators, and just placed the flowers on the ledges created by stacking 14", 10" and 6" layers directly on each other. When I took them off the cake, the buttercream was "mussed" a bit, but it was fine.

I used roses, fresias, small chrysanthemums, mini carns, orchids (all white) and ivy. The night before the wedding, I used florist wire and wired groups of 3 flowers together (staggered so they lined up in vertical row, rather than bunched all the same height). I left the stems pretty long (4-5") and put in jars of water over night. Then when I set up at the wedding, I snipped the stems short (2") simply laid then around the cake so that each group covered the stems of the previous group. Then I tucked small stems of Baby's Breath and a few sprigs of ivy among them. I also stuck in a few little white net "bows" made by bunching up fine wedding net (10" X 4") and securing with florist wire. I made a small bouquet for the top layer by putting florist foam in a small votive candle holder and arranging flowers and net bows in it. I cut out the center of the cake layer to the depth of the candle holder and stuck it in.

I ordered the flowers from a florist who knew they were for a cake, so they were pesticide free. I washed the ivy and the stems of the flowers with vegetable wash available from the produce section of the grocery store. You can also wrap the stems of the flowers in florist tape, if you want.

Some people just stick the flower stems into the cake, but I think it makes it harder to cut neat pieces of cake -- they will have holes in them.

Hope this helps. Good luck!

Lynne