Well now I was just wondering if I was to get a wedding cake how long I could expect it to last as I often hear about people keeping some to send to absent friends or people in other countries who weren’t able to make it to the ceremony and I would really like to know if it was to be purchased a few months in advance if it would last until the wedding. So I would like to know very good information about what your experiences are with this? And what did you do with the cake and any leftovers in terms of keeping it or transporting it now then?
There is a tradition of keeping the top layer of the cake in your freezer to eat on your first wedding anniversary. All married couple I know that have tried this, including myself, have found the layer to be dry and unpleasant on their first anniversary.
For the rest of the cake, I’ve never heard of shipping parts of it to relatives that couldn’t make it. Going through the temperature changes and rough handling of a shipping facility would probably ensure that your relative would get moldy crumbs. And driving it personally all over the place is much too big of an ask for the in-laws (meanwhile, the happy couple is on their honeymoon). The most common thing I see done with the cake is the leftovers go home with the parents of the bride (who paid for it) and they eat it with the rest of the leftovers while the couple is honeymooning.
The earliest I would pick up a cake for a wedding is the day before, and even then I think that’s a bad idea. Cake goes bad extremely quickly. Most people have the cake baked and delivered on the day of the wedding. You might purchase the cake a few months early (anyone that doesn’t elope does that), but the cake is not actually created until the day of.
In Hollywood, often longer than the marriage.
The bakery we used sent us a freshly baked/decorated mini cake on our first anniversary.
My wife used to do wedding cakes professionally. Almost everyone bakes the cake first and freezes it before decorating - often as much as a week before. Part of this is time management, part is just the simple fact that you can’t decorate warm cake. Short duration freezing doesn’t hurt the cake texture.
My wife says a month is about the point where she would notice the difference, if it’s wrapped up airtight. She uses a triple wrap with plastic cling film if it will be longer than a week.
You’re not going to get a year out of it, no matter what you do, not without major loss of quality. (On the other hand, I always thought that was the point of the 1-year tradition: “At least we lasted longer than the cake!”)
For transporting: Freezing isn’t usually an option because most frosting types will separate and turn grainy. If you get an airtight seal to prevent drying and keep it cool enough to prevent frosting from melting, I see no reason you couldn’t get a few days out of it without losing much quality, but it does depend on the cake and its fillings. Something with a wet filling between layers can turn to mush pretty fast.
How did you freeze it? Standard freezer or LN2 immersion?
Hey, some people are so over-the-top re: weddings that it could happen…
“So, who likes icecream cake…?” 
If you’re the Duke and Duchess of Windsor . . . a very long time.
We used a standard freezer for the top layer saving. You know, next to the chicken tenders and freez-e-pops.
(although ice cream cake is delicious too)
My aunt still has a frozen piece of cake from her son’s bris. Her son is now 59.
I told her I hope that’s all she saved from the bris. :eek:
As a professional baker I would not try to mail cake. As other have said the temp changes and jolting around aren’t going to do it any good.
If you try to save the top layer for the 1st anniversary do it right away, chilling it, boxing it, and then double or triple wrapping itin plastic. It won’t be the best quality when it comes out, but it will be …tolerable, and it’s fun to relive the memories.
I speak of regular white wedding cake. There are other types that handle it better, including pound cake, heavy carrot cake, or, for a groom’s cake, some use fruitcake. The latter lasts forever.
There’s another tradition of keeping the top tier to be served at the christening of the couple’s first child.
We tried this - without freezing it - it was a rich fruit cake which had been ‘fed’ with brandy and sherry, and was sealed down hermetically to a cake board with hard royal icing. We kept it covered with a couple of loose layers of greaseproof paper, in a cardboard box with the flaps folded in and taped, under the bed.
Unfortunately we had some complications that delayed the arrival of children, so after about 4 years, we opened the cake and ate some. The icing was rock hard and inedible and had yellowed. The cake inside was dry, but still perfectly sound and edible.
If Roger Corman was still alive, he could make a truly scary movie about when her freezer defrosts…
“What are you saying…? Are you telling me that there is some kind of monster loose in this city that the police can’t defend the public against…?”
“Yes. And… its Growing…”
That seems a bit danger fraught. I wonder how many cakes get sent to couples who didn’t make it a year?
[sub]I originally typed “dander fraught”. I guess that could mean “flakey”, so it may work in context.[/sub]
Friends lovingly saved the top tier to their magnificent, though so-so tasting, wedding cake. Come the first anniversary they cut into it, only to find it was a styrofoam layer, and not at all the cake they had served to guests. Considering the switcheroo, it wasn’t that much of a difference. The bakery had mysteriously gone out of business during the preceding year. 
I think this is where the tradition comes from; until the late 1890’s/early 1900’s the standard wedding cake was a heavy fruitcake, made months in advance so it could be loaded up with ungodly quantities of brandy and rum (in American recipies), then covered in boiled icing. Kept in a sealed tin, a layer of that would last for years, as you discovered. 
We paid for our own damn cake. We hadn’t told the catering people to do anything in particular, and they decided of their own accord that we would want the top tier (of the small presentation cake - the bulk of the cake was a couple of sheet cakes, which saved us roughly half the cost of a tiered cake for that many people) boxed up to freeze for our first anniversary.
As soon as we realized that the top tier hadn’t been served, we decided to bring it to the morning-after brunch and let the out-of-town guests have a second crack at it. It disappeared almost instantly.
(That was an awesome cake. I’m glad we didn’t take my mom’s advice that we shouldn’t spend our hard-earned money on good cake from a good bakery because nobody actually eats wedding cake. I eat wedding cake, dammit! No tasteless fondant for us - half of it was chocolate, and the other half was raspberry Bavarian cream. Covered in bittersweet ganache. I found it hilarious how many bakeries asked what our theme was. Theme? Our theme is “we want the cake to taste fabulous.”)
A friend has in his living room his grandmother’s wedding cake from the 19th century. It has been shellacked. I can’t imagine the state of the interior. Apparently, this was old Icelandic tradition.