6 CAKE IDEAS FOR YOUR INDIAN WEDDING

Wedding cakes in Indian weddings are becoming more and more common. In case you think that having a cake is not in line with Indian culture, here are six ideas you can use to blend the ‘Western’ idea of a cake with core Indian values, so that you can have the best of both worlds.

Indian culture has always been one that has encouraged assimilation. Whatever aspects and practices that happen in other cultures, we think nothing of adopting that for our own culture, but with our own twist. So we perform hip-hop dance and worship Ganpati while doing it. We bring Macdonald’s to India and coin menu items such as the ‘Maharaja’ burger. We adopt the practice of having cakes at our weddings, but we also give it our own Indian ‘twist’.

Here are a few ideas of wedding cakes with a distinct Indian flavour, for your own wedding.

1. Couples on top

Mounting figurines of the married couple on top of the cake is a common tradition. If you do it for your Indian wedding, remember that you can customise the figurines. You can either get them designed so that they match the appearances of you and your spouse, or you can go for a funky design that communicates your personalities. For instance, a wedding cake on which a bride is holding back a fleeing groom can bring about some laughs, and tell some truths about you to your wedding guests as well. Let your creativity soar.

 2. Inscriptions

If you’re a ‘word’ person more than a ‘picture’ person, you may want to write something on your wedding cake. White cakes with romantic lines picked out by the couple are quite the rage these days. For an Indian twist on this, see if you can find an inscriber who can write something in your mother tongue. Or for an even authentic cultural experience, go for Sanksrit shlokas written out in old English font.

 3. Mount some peacocks

Since the peacock is the national bird of India, instead of mounting couple figurines on your cake, you may consider mounting a peacock and a peahen. If your cake is big enough, and if your cake designer is good enough, they will drape your entire cake with a lovely layer of peacock feathers. For a better effect, make the peahen smaller than the peacock, and a more feminine colour, like white, while the peacock is in a majestic blue.

 4. Flowers, enough said.

Make your cake as full of flowers as you can, and you can guarantee that everyone will love it. For an Indian touch, go for jasmines, roses and lotuses. The number of designs that are possible with flowers is only limited by your imagination. You can go for a tiered look, where flowers separate each tier of the cake from the one above and below it, or you can go for a tender, more romantic, ‘vine’ look, that travels from the top to the bottom.

 5. Throw in some elephants

The other big majestic animal of Indian culture is the elephant. It is large, stable, and just looks damned calm about everything around it. So if you want the same calmness in your marriage, you may want to consider adding an elephant to your cake. It will only be one elephant, because let’s face it, no cake is going to be big enough to accommodate more than one. However, if you’re going to mount elephants to the top, how about having an elephant couple standing next to each other? As always, the possibilities are endless.

 6. The monument

Another way to crystallise your love for each other could be to theme your wedding cake around a monument of love. If you’re Indian, the biggest monument of love, the most eternal one, is the Taj Mahal. But you can also go for other monuments around the world that you have deep personal meaning for. Examples include the Eiffel Tower, the pyramids, and other such wonders of the world.