Afternoon Crumbs would love to be a part of your special day, working with you to create your perfect cake and assisting you in choosing all the details from flavours to design. We have put together this guide to help you through the process and start your planning.
Step 1: The Initial Discussion
The first stage is to let us know any details you have about the wedding so far. Don’t worry – we can fill in the gaps if it’s still early days and you haven’t chosen everything yet. The most important things to think about at the beginning are:
1. Date of the wedding – it’s always best to give us as much notice as possible, most weddings we start discussing around 9 months in advance, but if you’re on a tight schedule and the date is close do let us know as we will do our best to fit you in if we can.
2. Location of the wedding – let us know the venue for your wedding. We are able to deliver within Surrey, London and most of the South East of England. Depending on the location there may be an additional charge for this.
3. Design – let us know your thoughts and ideas! You can see examples of wedding cakes we have made here. All our cakes are bespoke though so you don’t have to stick to these designs. Let us know what style you are after or theme and we can create something special for you. Feel free to send us other designs you have seen on the internet or social media too. While we don’t replicate other bakes exactly it can give us an idea of the sort of design you are after and we can take inspiration from these to create something just for you. We can draw ideas from other wedding elements too. Things to you might want to consider include:
– Wedding colour schemes
– Flowers
– Other venue decorations
– Invitation or other stationary design
– Elements from the dress e.g. lace, beading (don’t worry we can keep this secret from your partner!)
– Favourite things or places that are personal to you both
4. Number of guests/size/number of tiers – let us know roughly how many people you are looking to feed with the cake and we can help you decide the size of the cake. We can guide you as to how many tiers are suitable for the number of people you’d like to serve. Let us know if there are a particular number of tiers you would like for a specific look though as we can also include dummy tiers if necessary. We only offer tiered fondant cakes. Buttercream cakes are all single tier. Some thoughts to consider related to the size of the cake:
– When are you serving the cake – is it just for the day guests or evening too?
– Would you like every guest to have a portion?
– Will you be serving a dessert as well or is the cake the dessert? This might also affect your choice of flavour.
– Will you be serving party portions or full slices
– How much would you like to have left over? For example if you’d like some for an event the following day – or just to enjoy yourselves!
We also offer cupcake towers and wedding favour biscuits.
At this stage I will do a sketch for you based on the ideas we have discussed and give you an idea of price. If you’d like to go ahead then it’s time for the fun bit – the tasting!
Step 2: The Cake Tasting
1. Location – Cake tastings take place at our shop in Claygate, Surrey. We can accommodate up to eight people so you can either attend with just you and your partner or bring your friends and family too.
2. Flavours – you can see a list of our flavours here. We will let you know how many flavours to choose for the tasting based on the number of tiers
3. Allergy/dietary requirements – please let us know if you or any guests have any allergy or dietary requirements. Unless specified all Afternoon Crumbs wedding cakes contain eggs, milk, soya, wheat flour containing gluten, food colouring and are made in a kitchen that handles nuts, peanuts, sulphur dioxide and alcohol. Specific products may also contain other allergens such nuts. We do offer cakes that don’t have gluten as an ingredient but these will be made in a kitchen that handles gluten as well as the other mentioned allergens. We don’t currently offer any vegan cakes.
4. Payment – we take a payment for the wedding cake tasting but the full deposit isn’t required until we have finalised designs.
Step 3: Decision making
Time to make the final choices on your cake:
1. Final design – After the tasting I will send you an email to summarise everything we have discussed along with a final sketch if there are any major amendments.
2. Flavours – confirm the flavours you would like and which you would like on each tier.
3. Cake Topper – if you would like a topper we can order this for you and add this to the final price of the cake. If you have one you’d like to use you can leave this at the venue for us to put in (this depends on the style of the cake – sometime it is best to have the topper during assembly)
4. Cake stand hire – let us know if you’d like to hire a cake stand from us. We have options depending on the design of the cake and style of wedding and venue. We require a deposit which starts from £100 but this is fully refundable on return of the stand to our shop. You can find out more in our Ts&Cs.
5. Deposit payment – we require 50% deposit to confirm the order
Step 4: Nearer The Date
1. Delivery info – we can deliver and set up your cake at the venue usually the morning of the wedding. It helps us to know:
– If there a specific room at the venue for the cake to go
– Is there a specific table in the room and will this be set up already
– Is there a delivery entrance we should use or should we go in the main entrance?
– What time will we be able to access the venue be from?
– Do you have a contact at the venue and will they be there on the morning of the wedding. We can also ask them all these questions instead if you do!!
2. Balance payments – the balance for your wedding cake is required one week prior to the wedding. We can send you a link to pay this online or you can pay over the phone or in the shop.
Step 5: After The Wedding
1. Cake Stand Return – Cake stands must be returned within 7 days unless an alternative time frame is agreed by Afternoon Crumbs. We can refund the deposit back to the card used without having the physical card if you would like someone else to return the stand for you.
