Bride spends £13k on 13ft wedding cake with 50kg of icing
A bride said she was left speechless after she saw her £13,000 wedding cake that was 13ft high, 6ft wide and made up of 50kg of fondant icing.
Madeline Burton, 18, splashed out on the huge castle cake for her wedding to childhood sweetheart Patrick, 20, at The Savoy on the Strand in London, where the ballroom reception cost £50,000, on 12 January.
The massive cake was designed by cake artist Sam Woodruff, from Gray Thurrock, Essex, who began creating the structure in November last year.
The cake was covered in intricate renaissance portraits and hundreds of silk flowers.
Woodruff used six 8-inch round cakes at the base of the structure in a petal design, while the rest was made from polystyrene.
Blue turrets which were 3D-printed were stacked on top of the structure and each window was fitted with LED balloon lights to make the cake glow.
Madeline, from Essex, said: "My whole wedding day went perfectly. It was a big wedding with over 200 friends and family. The cake was absolutely beautiful and I was lost for words.
"I paid around £13,000 for the cake and I loved the top of it with all the fairy light details.
"Sam and I worked together to design my dream cake. She is so talented and has been designing my cakes for me since I was 13 years old.
"I asked for a castle and she gave me a showstopper. Sam never fails to amaze me."
Woodruff, who has been making cakes for six years, said this was her biggest project so far.
She and her husband, Dave, spent six hours constructing the castle on the day of the wedding and had to use a ladder to reach the top of it.
"I cried when I saw the finished product," said Woodruff. "I was really emotional because the whole building process had taken so long.
"I had never seen her fully built before as the cake was so tall and I couldn't complete her in the house, so it was amazing to see it fully lit up with all the parts.
"Madeline is an old romantic and she loves everything renaissance and nostalgic and loves rich colours.
"It's the biggest creation I have ever made to date and because I have worked with Madeline for so long she knows I'm always going to go above and beyond for her.
"When we got to the Savoy everything had to be built using a ladder because it was so high and I certainly got a few workouts in when we were building it."
The increased average cost of a UK wedding
According to figures published last month by wedding planning website Hitched.co.uk, the average cost of a wedding in the UK in 2023 was £20,700.
This was a 12.5% increase on 2022, when the average wedding cost £18,400, and almost 20% more than in 2021, when the average cost of a UK wedding was £17,300.
Hitched said the increase last year was because of a period of high inflation, with almost a third of the 1,800 couples they surveyed saying they were forced to increase their budgets at least once while planning their wedding.
The biggest recent increase in the cost of a wedding came between 2020 and 2021, when the average price jumped from £9,100 to £17,300 as the UK slowly emerged from the coronavirus pandemic.
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