The trends in wedding cake design change from one year to the next. The trend at the moment is for bigger and bigger cakes. The cakes have to be really tall, really wide and often with fairy lights, the more flamboyant the better.
Many cakes can be assembled before taking them to the venue. The finished cake is popped in a cake box, taken to the venue and then lifted out onto the cake table, a nice easy delivery. However, recently I have had to take the cakes in pieces to be built at the venue, they are too big to take in one piece and the assembly of the cake involves step ladders. The bottom tier of the cake in the photo was 20 inches in diameter and with a total of 9 tiers plus a ruffle ball on the top it took 2 hours to assemble the cake at the venue. The cake was so tall that I had to climb a step ladder to put the top tiers on, delicate piping is not easy to do while balancing on the top step of a ladder.
Very tall cakes also need an internal structure to keep the cake from toppling over if any of the guests accidently bump the table.
This cake was about 1.7 metres tall but I have made cakes that have reached 2 metres and i'm sure we will go higher than this.