In planning a Milwaukee wedding, specifically a budget conscience one, decisions are made regarding what is important to you. Basically, you prepare a “must have, great to have, nice to have” list. One way to cut money easily is to forego a cake. While this is a strong tradition for some, it wasn’t on my “must have” list. So to preserve some of the tradition, but not spend the money, we made a few adjustments.
First, our hotel location allowed us to have a sweets table where we were able to provide our own sweets. We had brownies, 7-layer bars, cookies and fudge. To add some personality, we put little a little white chocolate ‘Q’ on each piece of fudge. This helped satisfy anyone’s sweet tooth that evening. (Not to mention it really worked well being that we had “full belly” appetizers for dinner).
To prepare the sweets table items, I had a little party with a some girlfriends and we baked a few different items. I also had a few friends make some of their signature treats for the table. It can be a great way to incorporate tradition as well. Maybe your great-grandma had an awesome recipe for peanut butter cookies.
I still wanted to have a cake cutting, so I ordered two cute Madelyn cakes from Metro Market in our wedding colors. (They sell these at a few regular Pick n’ Saves as well). If you call ahead, they can make with a wide range of color combinations. It turned out to be the most unique cake “cutting” as on the fly my husband and I picked up a small cake and took a bite out of each side. It is such a great memory. These little cakes are about $7 or so; much less than the $4 – $6 dollar a slice price, not including cake cutting.
For the 1 year anniversary tradition, we picked up a Madelyn cake. They are so yummy!
Another option we threw around was doing cupcakes. They turned out be similar in price of a cake, but you do avoid the cake cutting fee (usually). Simma’s has an awesome selection of cupcakes that are oh so tastey. http://www.simmasbakery.com/
We saved at least $500, and maybe closer to $900 by going this route and we had some great memories.