Cake ideas for a small budget wedding

This picture was taken before the cupcakes were put on the platter under the chocolate cake so just picture cupcakes there :)

Anyone who has planned a wedding or is planning a wedding knows how expensive it can be. This is especially true when you are a single parent and trying to do everything on your own.  When my daughter decided to get married I wanted to give her the wedding of her dreams, as long as her dreams were  low- budget dreams.

 Knowing her absentee father would not be contributing anything, I had to find a way to create a lovely wedding for my daughter on my very low salary. We started with the wedding reception. We checked with local bakeries to price wedding cakes.  Wow...they were really expensive.  We discussed doing cupcakes instead but they $15 a dozen and they weren't available in the flavors she wanted.  It was a small wedding and we figured we could get by with six to seven dozen cupcakes which was much cheaper than the cake but I kept thinking about how much it would cost me to actually make the cupcakes.  I can make a lot of cupcakes for $100 !

My daughter  loved the idea of me making the cupcakes and she wanted to add a large chocolate cake for her husband.  We decided to pick it up at our local Sams Club for $15.  I topped it with a strawberry and viola !  Cake for groom taken care of.

Heather chose the flavors of cupcakes she wanted, most of which was on my other blog Sweet Southern Blue.  Learn from my mistake and make the cake part of the cupcakes a few weeks ahead of time and put them in the freezer.  I didn't have room in my freezer and only had two flavors made ahead of time which meant that the day before the wedding I was baking like crazy instead of getting my hair and nails done.  

Go ahead and make the frosting a couple of days ahead of time and put it in the refrigerator, it will make your life so much easier. Another tip I found helpful was to order very large piping tips.  I ordered these Ateco 6 piece pastry tube and tips set from Amazon for $8.  It only takes a couple of minutes to frost a dozen cupcakes with these large tips.

The best part about making your own cupcakes is that they taste so much better than anything you can buy and they are so easy to make since they all start with a cake mix.  

The cupcakes were a hit and we only had 9 left out of the 80 I brought.  I am posting links below to all of the cupcakes she chose for her wedding. Just click on the pics and they should carry you to recipe:

W

White Chocolate