How to Choose the Best Wedding Cake Size

Everyone dreams about specific elements of their wedding day, things that they simply cannot wait for. It might be the perfect dress, the venue, the first kiss as a married couple, or (if you have a sweet tooth like us) the wedding cake. Thinking about your favorite flavors to incorporate, dreaming up an amazing design, and picking just the right stand to display the cake on are all fun and important things to consider, but deciding what size the cake should be can be a more difficult piece of the puzzle. Here, we are offering some practical tips for choosing the right size cake for your wedding, ensuring that dessert goes off without a hitch!

Start With the Design

Although it may seem like a counterintuitive place to start, we always recommend choosing your wedding cake design first. Often, the wedding cake acts as the centerpiece of the reception, so it is important that the cake fits the theme and aesthetic of the celebration. If you have a specific vision or dream for how the cake will look, it is important to prioritize getting exactly what you love. Maybe you love a traditional look and want to include fun, vintage piping on the cake, or maybe you want a more natural look that includes pressed flowers. Maybe you are leaning into a modern aesthetic and want a towering cake with simple lines and unique angles. If you have always dreamed of having a large, tiered cake at your wedding, but you will not have a large guest count, ask your baker if they offer faux tiers as an option. Using faux tiers can give you the look of a magnificent, towering masterpiece, but won’t leave you with lots of leftover cake. The main message here is to find a cake design that you love, and move forward from there.

Consider Your Guest Count

Now we get to the more practical considerations. The next major component to think about when ordering your wedding cake size is the number of people you will be serving. Although not everyone is a cake lover (sad, we know), and some people will skip cake altogether, others will go back for seconds and want to try every flavor available. Because of this, we recommend ordering a cake large enough to provide every guest with a slice. If your expected guest count is 100 people, a large two-tier cake will be the perfect size. If you are planning for closer to 150 people, a three-tier cake is best, and if you expect 200 people or more, consider ordering a four or five-tier wedding cake. This is a general rule of thumb, and it is important to discuss your guest count with your baker to ensure that you know how many servings their specific cakes offer. There are a few other factors to consider as well, and we will get into them next.

Decide if You’re Serving Other Desserts

We are big believers in dessert as a whole, and do not discriminate between sweet treats! Adding a dessert bar to your wedding with options other than cake is a fun way to add variety, as well as options for those who may not like cake. Maybe you want to elevate the dessert table with French macarons and delicate dessert shooters, or have a more mobile, hand-held dessert option like cupcakes or cookies. Whatever you decide to include, just make sure that you love it! That being said, serving other desserts can impact the size of the cake you should order.

Our rule of thumb when offering a dessert bar and cake is to order enough for two dessert servings per guest. This is because when multiple desserts are available, people will often grab more than one from the table. So, if your guest count is 100 people, we recommend ordering a total of 200 dessert servings. You can do this in a number of ways, but we recommend ordering a cake that will serve approximately 80% of your guests, and then adding enough dessert bar items to reach the total number of servings. A simple breakdown of this would be as follows: if your guest count is 100 people, then you would order a cake that would serve 80 people, along with 120 dessert bar items. You don’t need to overthink this, just strive to order around two dessert servings per person.

Think About Slice Size

Because cake is served after a larger meal, traditional wedding cake slices are fairly small, just a sweet bite to finish off the meal. A traditional wedding cake slice size is 1 inch X 1 inch X 2-3 inches, depending on the height of the cake tier. This is the slice size that most bakeries base their number of servings on, so if you decide to serve larger cake slices, you will want to order a larger cake than is typically recommended. Party slice sizes are typically 1 inch X 1 inch X 5-6 inches (again, depending on the height of the tier), so if you want to offer party slices, you will need to order a cake that is approximately twice as large. Again, this is something that we highly recommend discussing with your baker, as they will know how many servings their specific cakes offer.

One other note about slicing and serving the cake- you will get far more servings out of each tier if you cut the slices in a grid formation rather than in wedges. There are lots of cutting guides available online that you can follow, or you can ask your caterer if they would be willing to slice the cake for you (they typically have lots of experience doing this!). If you have a relative or friend cutting and serving the cake for you, just make sure they know how to slice it before they begin.

Plan for Leftovers or an Anniversary Tier

The last thing to consider when choosing your wedding cake size is whether you would like to have any leftover cake to enjoy after the wedding, or if you would like to save the top tier as an anniversary cake. It is a time-honored tradition to freeze the top tier of your wedding cake and then thaw it so that you can eat it on your anniversary one year later. This is by no means a requirement. You may be traveling to your wedding, and shipping a frozen cake back home is not easy, or maybe you just don’t want to commit to the loss of freezer space for a year. There is no right or wrong answer here, but if you do want to save part of the cake for an anniversary or simply have extra cake to enjoy in a more relaxed setting after the wedding, we suggest ordering an extra tier on your wedding cake. This will ensure that you have plenty of cake for your guests, along with a little extra just for you and your spouse!

Choosing the perfect wedding cake size is about more than numbers — it’s about balance. The right size complements your design, accommodates your guest count, and ensures that your cake feels like an intentional, beautiful part of your day. Whether you’re dreaming of a grand multi-tiered masterpiece or an elegant single-tier statement, the best size is the one that fits your wedding vision and makes every bite feel special.