In need of wedding cake ideas? We’ve got a few. The ceremonious confection has, after all, been a tradition for millennia: its roots trace back to ancient Rome, where grooms would break a barley cake over their bride’s head to officialize their union. Thousands of years later, Queen Victoria served a royal icing cake to her bridal party for her marriage to Prince Albert—the earliest precedent of the all-white style that’s still commonplace today—whereas her son, Prince Leopold, is often credited with being the first person to serve a completely edible tiered cake on his wedding day in 1882. (A photograph of the historic cake, which is on display in Kensington Palace, shows it was decorated with putti figures holding bows and arrows.)
Fast forward to the present day, and wedding cakes have become a highly personal matter of preference—and, as we’ve seen in Vogue’s wedding coverage—sometimes even an art form. Take Umber Ahmad s brutalist-inspired cake, or PJ Magerko-Liquorice and Jordan Millington-Liquorice’s ten-foot wedding cake that required sabers to cut. At the culmination of their three-day St. Tropez extravaganza, Sarah Staudinger and Ari Emanuel cut an enormous Tarte Tropézienne, while Babba Canales served a Swedish “princess cake” with a miniature 3-D print of the couple on top. Then there are those who opt for adventurous flavors: take Karen Elson, who chose Earl Grey icing.
Below, see some of the best (and most unusual) wedding cakes published in Vogue—and perhaps you’ll find inspiration for your own.