Bride’s vs Wedding Cake Etiquette, 1931

According to Emily Post, a wedding cake was the chief ornament of a wedding table – “Dear Mrs. Post: Is it necessary to have a wedding cake on a buffet table at the wedding reception, in addition to the small boxes of wedding cake that are to be stacked on a table for the guests to take home with them? Answer: Yes. As a rule the wedding cake is the chief ornament of the wedding table. I have never, as a matter of fact, seen a wedding table without one.”

Question: What is the difference between the bride's cake and the wedding cake?

Answer: The bride's cake is the large white cake, elaborately decorated, and containing the traditional, ring, thimble and coin. The bride cuts the first slice and the cake is served to the guests.

Wedding cake is the rich black fruit cake, slices of which are placed in little individual white boxes, bearing the initials of the bride and groom, and given to each guest.– From “Standard Rules of Etiquette,” 1931

 🍽Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Wedding Cake Etiquette

It wasn’t until the1930s that the bride and groom always posed for a photograph cutting the cake together.
— Photo, Etiquipedia’s private library

The ‘Cake Smashing’ Custom

Some wedding customs— sharing food, for example— are ancient and universal. Others are more recent. It wasn’t until the1930s that the bride and groom always posed for a photograph cutting the cake together.

Still others are far more recent. “Bride’s Book of Etiquette” (1993), having explained that sharing the first slice of cake symbolizes a couple’s willingness to share a household, feels the need to add “(No food fights!).”

Unthinkable as it would have been a generation ago, messing up your new spouse’s face with cake is now considered part of the fun at weddings. “It is more and more prevalent for the couple to grind the wedding cake in each other’s faces,” a correspondent complains to Miss Manners in her book “On (Painfully Proper) Weddings” (1995). “Even fathers will urge the groom to ‘give it to her, smoosh it in her face.’ ” Miss Manners sees this as part of a growing show-biz note in weddings, as when a groom goes for a laugh by answering the big question not, “I do,” but, “Hmmm, I’ll think about it.”

Certainly a lot of people have become uncomfortable with solemnity. But the guests who egg on the bride and groom to smear each other with cake are also engaging in an all-too-traditional practice, the bantering ridicule of affection. (People in Jane Austen novels decry it as “raillery.”)

Respectable married people are not fair game for this sort of teasing. Encouraging cake mashing, like a host of other awful wedding customs, from shivaree (a noisy mock serenade on the wedding night) to tying a tin can to the newlyweds’ getaway car, is one last chance for the couple’s friends to indulge in the game of “X and Y, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G.” — The Los Angeles Times, 1997

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Etiquette Trends of 1891

“A plain round cake for the bridal party alone...” took the place of  the “remarkable structure” known as the bridal cake, which had become the societal norm, from one first look at Great Britain’s Queen Victoria’s wedding cake, to right up until that point in 1891.

New “Fashions” in Etiquette

A plain round cake for the bridal party alone takes the place nowadays of the remarkable structure once thought necessary, and known as the bridal cake. The bride eats it, and somewhere in it is the pretty ring which is to bring luck to one of the bridesmaids. A newer and approved fashion of foretelling their matrimonial fortune is to pass around to the maids, on a silver salver, a number of tiny white cakes, one of which contains the magic ring. 

Another new fancy is to have the bride’s bouquet formed of as many separate clusters as there are bridesmaids. Just before she leaves the room, after the reception, for the purpose of donning her traveling costume, the bride divides the bouquet, tossing a bunch to each bridesmaid, and the girl who catches the first is supposed to marry within the year. 

It is more than ever the fashion to send out cards by mail announcing a baby’s birth. These consist of a little card on which is engraved the infant’s name, with the date of birth just underneath, and the mother’s card inclosed in the same envelope. – Los Angeles Herald, 1891

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Elizabeth Post’s Wedding Etiquette

Wedding etiquette... one of society's most perennial problems

By Elizabeth Post

Details...

Dear Mrs. Post: Who has the right to plan the wedding reception details, such as number of guests’ to invite, planning for decorations and food, etc.? It has been a question between mother and daughter. —Laura

Dear Laura: Although I don’t like putting it on that basis, it is the bride’s right to make the decisions. It’s her day, not her mother’s, and while they should consult with each other, of course, the final decisions should be the bride’s

Wedding Cake

Dear Mrs. Post: Is there a rule that says the wedding cake should be a fruit cake for a formal wedding, and a white cake for an informal wedding? —Linda 

Dear Linda: No, there’s no such rule. Years ago the wedding cake was traditionally dark fruit cake. Nowadays, even at the most formal wedding, it is a white or yellow cake with white icing. There may be, in addition, a “groom’s cake” which is dark fruit cake. This is generally cut into small portions in advance and packaged in small white boxes to be given to the guests “for good luck.”

Turtleneck? No!

Dear Mrs. Post: What do you think of a prospective bridegroom who plans to wear a turtleneck shirt with a tuxedo at his wedding? —Ellen 

Dear Ellen: I don’t like it. A wedding is one place where tradition is most important. I imagine that a wedding picture of a groom in a turtleneck will come back to haunt him years from now, just as we laugh at pictures of brides in flapper outfits of the twenties. The traditional bridal gown and the tuxedo with shirt and tie will never look out of style. 

Wedding Presents 

Dear Mrs. Post:Yesterday, I received from a bride of three weeks my wedding gift to her, with a note reading, “Since our marriage was only temporary, I feel obliged to return your lovely wedding present.” I know she was right. I know that all wedding gifts are given for the couple’s married life, and should this state not be realized, the present must be returned. But, on the other hand, wasn’t I on the receiving end at the wedding reception? Couldn’t the bride keep my gift? —Marion 

Dear Marion: The girl was right in her thoughtfulness, but wrong in her action. Wedding gifts need not be returned, no matter how brief the marriage. The exceptions are presents to her from the groom himself, or presents of particular sentimental value given to them both from his family. These should be returned. – Highland Park News, June 1968

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipediag tiquette Encyclopedia