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Wedding Cake Traditions
The origins of the tradition of the wedding cake date back to the Roman era.
The Romans were not in the habit of baking elaborate or elegant wedding cakes with icing and custom wedding cake toppers. Usually they used loaves of wheat bread. The loaf of bread was broken over the heads of the newlyweds to bring them luck and prosperity. Sometimes it was broken only over the bride’s head, usually by the groom.
The crumbs of wedding cake that landed on the floor symbolized good luck and fertility for the bride and groom, and it was considered good luck for guests to eat the crumbs of "wedding cake". Single women scrambled for the grains to ensure their own betrothals.
During the medieval times, when each guest at a wedding was supposed to bring a small cake, the cakes would be stacked on the table in levels and layers. If the bride and groom were able to kiss over the top of the stack it was considered good luck.
In the 1660s a French chef was visiting London and observed the cake piling ceremony. Appalled at the haphazard manner in which the British stacked baked goods, often to have them tumble, he conceived the idea of transforming the mountain of bland biscuits into an iced, multi-tiered cake sensation.
These cake stacks thus eventually merged into one cake and evolved into the modern wedding cake.
Distributing pieces of cake to one's guests is a tradition that also dates back to the Roman Empire. The first piece of cake is cut by the bride with the "help" of the groom. This task originally was delegated exclusively to the bride. It was she who cut the cake for sharing with her guests but now it is a joint task completed by both bride and groom.
After the cake cutting ceremony, the couple proceed to feed one other from the first slice. This provides another lovely piece of symbolism, the mutual commitment of bride and groom to provide for one another.
Wedding cake toppers became custom and were dominant in US weddings in the 1950s where it represented togetherness. This symbol is still used today although there is so much more variety in design and significance of the wedding cake topper.
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