Why do people save the top tier of their wedding cake to eat when it is old and stale? Where did this tradition get started?
On the big day, the little piece of cake the bride and groom feed each other may be the only piece they get, but, surprisingly, this is not the reason brides and grooms started saving the top tier of their wedding cake.
The first person to really start the trend was Queen Elizabeth II. When she got married to Prince Philip in 1947, she used each tier of her three-tier wedding cake for a different purpose.
She used the bottom tier to serve her wedding guests, the middle tier to send home with guests and use as gifts, and the top tier she preserved for a future special occasion. As far as we know, brides began following in her footsteps.
Years later, Queen Elizabeth used the top tier at Prince Charles’s christening. And this was right in line with customs. It used to be pretty much guaranteed that a bride would have her first child within a year of the wedding, hence the practice of saving a portion of your wedding cake to prevent having to buy another one so soon.*
As time passed, it became less common for couples to have a child so quickly and more common for children to get their own freshly baked cake, but the practice of saving the top tier lived on. Couples began using it for other things, like their first anniversary (probably the longest amount of time you could wait and still have an edible piece). Many bakeries will re-create a couple’s top tier to ensure they don’t have to eat freezer-burned or stale cake on their anniversary, but if stored and thawed correctly, the top tier can taste as it did on the big day.
Pro tip: If you do decide to save some cake, make sure you freeze it until the icing is firm enough to wrap the cake in air-tight plastic wrap.
*Sources include MentalFloss.com.
