Wedding Cake Wonders
Fabulous Fruit
When choosing a wedding cake in Japan you are not going to be offered towering confections decorated with a cute little bride and groom atop flowers, frosting and filling. Almost all wedding caterers offer a choice of a simple sheet cake topped with fruit and whipped cream. Invariably, strawberries (they do look like hearts, don’t they?) will be involved. And you’ve heard about the price of designer fruit in Japan? Well, taken to its extreme, a cake topped with cut designer fruit is considered the ultimate extravagance in guest offerings.
We’ve culled pictures of various wedding cakes from Japanese weddings to give you an idea of the “variety” to be found. You’ll see they range from very simple to somewhat copious displays of fruit. The other interesting anomaly is the fact that they will often say “Happy Wedding” in English!
Samurai Serving
Yup, you guessed it. Many cakes in Japan are cut with a ceremonial sword! And why wouldn’t they be in this land of the samurai? Whether the bride and groom choose a traditional wedding or a modern, western affair, the ceremonial cutting of the cake is truly a chance to wield their sword of love.
Cutting the Cake
Serving It Up
From Simple to Sensational
Here’s an interesting element that you might not expect. The cake that you got for your wedding, the one that’s on display so beautifully on the table and you just cut with your new spouse – that’s not what they serve! They actually have a different cake in the back that is cut and prepared to serve to your guests, often on carefully garnished plates with other tasty desert treats, including custards, macaroons, fruit dishes and (rarely) chocolates or petit fours. This is part of keeping the proceedings going. You may have already read in our cultural pages that wedding receptions are usually a very strictly timed 2 hours and never run over. So having desert all ready is part of the carefully orchestrated timing of the event.