[custom_adv] Wedding cakes are a key component of many couple's special day, providing a magnificent centre piece for 'The Wedding Breakfast', which takes place after the ceremony. [custom_adv] The cutting of the cake is the first task that bride and groom perform jointly as husband and wife, and so the cake takes on a symbolism and meaning beyond simply being a delicious finale to a celebratory meal. [custom_adv] A wedding cake made for a Royal couple will often be large enough to serve over 2,000 people, with slices packaged up and sent to charities and organisations close to them as well as served up to the guests in attendance. [custom_adv] Royal wedding cakes throughout history have weighed anything from 300lbs to over 500lbs. And after designs are drawn up, chefs will spend hours building each tier before it is assembled in situ. For The Wedding of Prince William to Catherine Middleton in 2011, chef Fiona Cairns created 900 delicate sugar-paste flowers to decorate the couple's wedding cake, taking her team five weeks to prepare. [custom_adv] Every Royal Wedding cake features significant and intricate designs which are intended to reflect the personalities of the couple as well as the significance of their union, a tradition that reaches far back to Queen Victoria's wedding day in 1840. [custom_adv] Queen Victoria married Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Cotha (later Prince Consort) on 10 February 1840 – it was the first marriage of a reigning English Queen for 300 years. The three tiered wedding cake weighed 300 pounds and had decorations including busts of the couple on the top tier. Its said that after Queen Victoria's wedding to Prince Albert, wedding cakes became more commonplace at receptions across the country. [custom_adv] On the night of her wedding the young Queen wrote, ' 'How can I ever be thankful enough to have such a Husband! ... to be called by names of tenderness, I have never yet heard used to me before—was bliss beyond belief! Oh! This was the happiest day of my life!' The couple went on to have nine children, most of whom married into other Royal families in Europe. [custom_adv] The Prince of Wales, as King Edward VII was then known, married Princess Alexandra of Denmark at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, on 10 March 1863. The cake was elaborately iced and is decorated with flowers.
