The fondant on our cake was delicious, IMO.
I personally find big white wedding cakes to be an overpriced abomination. Who in their right mind likes dry white cake? Ick! And the little plastic people on top? TAAAA-cky. (But that’s just me. All standard disclaimers apply. No intend to offend anyone who likes white wedding cake with plastic people, etc.)
If you’re wedding’s at all non-traditional, throw out the whole white wedding cake idea and do what you want. Here’s what we had.
I’d ask to try the fondant before I’d believe her - I think it all tastes like crap - but my kids love it. Its sugar and glycerin - you can add rosewater or something for taste - but adult palates don’t tend to be real big on eating hunks of sugar - no matter how much almond extract you add for taste.
(Marzipan is pretty good though. Covering a cake in marzipan might break the bank.)
I agree with you in priniciple-- wedding cakes are often pretty to look at but taste like butter cream and monogamy (Kingdom of Loathing reference!), and not much else. We were thinking of a strawberry shortcake type deal, which I personally love, and which would be a good summer cake. Nothing crazy fancy, nothing hideously expensive. If we can get little plastic people to put on top who look like Frankenstein and his bride, we’d probably do it.
We’re also having brownies, cream puffs, and cannolis, for people who want other desserts, so the cake is going to be a supplemental dessert, not the only thing. Do you think most people would opt for the cake or for the mini-desserts? Heh, they’ll probably have both…
I pay attention to the cake, but that’s because I love to bake and I’ve done a few wedding cakes.
It seems to me that if you are going to serve cake, people will probably expect at least a pretty, decorated cake, if not a tiered one. But if you get rid of expectations by serving something other than cake – little pastries, petit fours, even cupcakes – I think you would be able to get away with a lot more. With cupcakes, you probably wouldn’t even have to tell the bakery that they’re for a wedding; you should just be able to order 200 cupcakes, with these decorations, and call it good. If you then want to tier them, you can probably rent a cupcake tower from a party rental place. If you go that route but still want a cake for you and your groom to cut, you can order a 6" cake from the baker, and cut that.
So, yeah, I think only sheet cakes are too “cheap” and informal for a wedding. But I also think that you should shop around a bit, because most of the places that I looked at for my wedding had prices in the $2/slice range, so the price you were quoted sounds awfully high (unless you wanted extremely intricate decoration)!
On preview, I see that you’ve found someone with much more reasonable prices. Yay! I hope her stuff tastes great. 
The last wedding I went to had cupcakes instead of cake. There was no cake ceremony, and everyone just swarmed the table and grabbed big fat frosted cupcakes.
At a wedding I attended two years ago, the bride’s mother made the cake herself. It had several tiers – one of which had a layer of Nutella – and was decorated with bunny Peeps with a pair of wedding-costumed Peeps on top. It was pretty fantastic.
Other than that, I couldn’t really care less about the cake.
I care more about what a cake tastes like than what it looks like. That being said, I love the traditional “foo foo” cakes - and I also like the Krispy Kreme cakes, the red velvet armadillo cakes - any festive cake.
Again - as long as it tastes good.
VCNJ~
Rats, took too long editing my previous post. So here’s the addendum:
…And on preview again, I see that you’re already doing something other than the boring white-on-white. Also yay! Strawberry shortcake would be divine for a summer wedding. We had 2 types of cheesecake for our fall wedding: my husband’s favorite, which is chocolate raspberry, and my favorite, which is chocolate-kahlua-espresso with a hazelnut crust. YUM. And I love that you’re having other desserts, too!
Y’know, with a strawberry shortcake-type cake, you might not even want fondant. I mean, shortcake is a simple dessert, and I think it’s kind of meant to be rustic and not decorated within an inch of its life. I would probably get rid of the fondant and just do buttercream (or cream cheese frosting, or white chocolate buttercream) and decorate with strawberries. That might save you some money, too, because fondant usually adds to the baker’s cost.
Mmm, now I want some strawberry shortcake…
Oh, I don’t want fondant. When I said that, the lady (she sounded like she was a day older than God, which I consider to be a good thing-- little old ladies make good cake), said, “No, let me tell you, most people make fondant all wrong, and they ruin it for everyone! My fondant is just delicious!” But I don’t think that fondant would go well with strawberry shortcake anyway. Maybe we can have a whipped creame type frosting, and have it be decorated on the outside with strawberries instead of flowers, something like that.
Imagine these cake toppers. That would drop a few jaws, eh? 
Me too. And a piece of the cheesecake from taxi78cab’s wedding. It’s awesome that you found a potential baker, Rubystreak, and that you’re going with something fun!
I honestly can’t remember what the cake was like at most of the few weddings I’ve been to. I remember the last wedding cake’s appearance, as it appealed to me, but I wasn’t around to taste any. (Fiance and I hadn’t seen each other for five months and bowed out after the cutting to have some rare alone time during our first weekend together in a long time.) The only other cake I remember was at a small wedding that I helped do set-up and clean-up for. I only remember it because it was a gaudily decorated sheet cake, and didn’t really work for the small, informal wedding. (It didn’t quite match itself, to be honest. Sheet cake is okay, but I associate it with birthday parties. This one in particular was decorated more heavily than a semi-formal wedding cake, and thus was a bit odd in and of itself.)
IIRC, your wedding is small and more casual, yes? You can do cakes from the grocery store and have them come out both nice and not cost you a ton. (I don’t know if your grocery store does this, but the chains that I go to actually make pretty decent wedding cakes.) Even having two or three small circular cakes on tiers that ascend in size would look neat and “wedding” enough to give the right effect. This is a really horrible presentation, but the level of the tiers is what I’m trying to illustrate by linking to it. I think that it would definitely be doable, as the circular cakes are pretty cheap, come in multiple sizes, and the tiers could be purchased, rented, or made for a reasonable price. (Check out the craft stores that do cake making if you want to buy them.)
From what I’ve read on various wedding planning sites, $1.75/slice is a good deal.
That’s very reasonable. For a pretty basic cake I charge $2/slice, which seems to be the typical rate, around here anyway.
I really can’t say what to expect for $1.75/slice…it depends on the individual baker. I’d ask for a sample, maybe see if you can order a miniature version to try. If it were me charging $1.75/slice, it would probably be something very simple (but delicious).
Unfortunately, the standard wedding cake slice size is 1 x 2 inches. That’s the size typically used to calculate the price, according to everything I’ve ever read. If you go here you can see how many servings you’re supposed to be able to get out of each cake size. For example, a 6-inch cake apparently feeds 12.
Must be the same folks that figure how many cookies come out of a recipe. Does anyone ever get remotely close to the number of cookies per batch as the recipe says?
I adore pretty cakes, so it does matter to me. But don’t get me wrong, a) I’m the kind of person who would buy a wedding cake coffee table book and b) I’d remember a lovely wedding cake but by no means would I demand someone have one at their weding. A pretty cake that doesn’t taste good is a horrible tragedy. Non-traditional is fine, but I’d at least go for something the populace generally doesn’t get to eat.
1x2 inches??
Skeleton toppers, how great!
I kind of ignore the cake. Most wedding cakes I’ve tasted have been plain and slightly dry. Nothing to get seconds on.
One I recall had a fruit layer that was nice, but again not worth seconds.
As for keepsake pieces of cake, which you are supposed to take to those who couldn’t attend, I think that’s very strange. And even worse is the idea of saving a piece in a tin on the shelf in your closet.
I think in general that weddings tend to be over priced because purchasers are inexperienced and under tremendous social pressure to honor the ceremony and their guests, to impress people, to express love, and various other things. It’s not the setup for good choices, and this is a time for many young people starting a family that huge and bad financial choices can have their most negative impact.
So when I go to a wedding I always feel better about seeing people caring about each other than I do about seeing fancy catering.
That being said, I went to a wedding recently where a friend of the couple had baked many dozens of cupcakes and arranged them on a tiered stand - and they were amazingly good (this friend is both an excellent cook and a clever decorator and stylist). The effect was very pleasing and I heard several people praise it.
Wedding cake is not usually very good to eat. They use that rolled fondant junk for icing.
The only concern I have regarding wedding cake is that the bride (and groom) are haooy with itws appearance.
Isn’t cake what the reception is all about? Seriously - it doesn’t have to be fancy, but it must be good. If your guests wanted to eat styrofoam topped with insulation foam, they’d have eaten at the local greasy spoon on the way over.
If you can’t get a good cake for a fair price, serve fruit salad. It’s pretty, tasty, and good for you.