Royal Wedding Cake Price
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s royal wedding cake just made its royal debut at the wedding of the year. Made up of layers of lemon sponge soaked with elderflower syrup, filled with Amalfi lemon curd and covered with Swiss meringue elderflower buttercream, the royal wedding cake baker, Claire Ptak of London’s Violet Bakery, built the non-traditional cake in three different pieces.
The wedding cake is to be served at the Reception. It was designed by Claire Ptak and features elderflower syrup made at The Queen’s residence in Sandringham from the estate’s own elderflower trees, as well as a light sponge cake uniquely formulated for the couple. #royalwedding pic.twitter.com/kt5lE4tEn9
- Kensington Palace (@KensingtonRoyal) May 19, 2018
But how much does a royal wedding cake cost? While Kensington Palace hasn't shared the amount publicly, we did the math here.
Like any other wedding cake, the cost of the royal wedding cake comes down to how many people you need to serve.
Since Prince Harry and Meghan Markle served their wedding cake at the lunchtime reception at St. George’s Hall hosted by the Queen, they needed enough to feed the 600 guests in attendance. The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge also served their wedding cake at the afternoon reception following their wedding at Westminster Abbey in 2011.
For a wedding cake for 150 people, Ptak charges ₤784.80 (about $1,057), according to her bakery’s website. Since Meghan and Harry need 600 servings, that would bring the cost of their wedding cake to ₤3,139.2 (about $4,228). But that doesn’t factor in the ₤100 ($135) Ptak charges for fresh flowers and assembling the cake on site, not to mention the delivery fee, which isn’t listed on her site.
One of the tiers getting the Elderflower swiss meringue buttercream treatment xx
A post shared by Violet By Claire Ptak (@violetcakeslondon) on May 18, 2018 at 11:49am PDT
It’s also likely that Clair Petak was asked to make cake for many more people than that. Will and Kate’s baker, Fiona Cairns, told Town & Country in April that after she and her team finished building the 8-tier cake that went on display at the royal wedding, they went down to the kitchens of Buckingham Palace to cut the 600 separate slices of cake for the guests attending the afternoon reception. Cairns also said that an additional 4,000 slices of fruitcake were sent out by the Prince of Wales in tins as gifts.
Since Harry and Meghan’s wedding cake isn’t a fruitcake that can be preserved and put on display months later like Kate and Will’s was, the 600 slices served to wedding guests will likely be cut from the one displayed at the reception itself. But if Prince Charles decides to send out another 4,000 slices as gifts, that would add an additional ₤20,928 (about $28,192) to the bill, bringing the total up to ₤24,167.2 (just over $32,555).
However, Ivy Jacobson, senior digital editor at The Knot, told CBS News that she estimates that the royal wedding cake cost a whole lot more to make - $71,600, to be precise.
"You have to think about transporting it, assembling it,” Jacobsen told CBS. “There's a lot of labor, a lot of detail and the fillings and flavorings up the cost and if they're looking to feed hundreds of people, then that's what's going to get it to that $71,000 price tag."
Once you add in delivery fees, premium ingredients, enough fresh flowers to fit a royal wedding and the additional cost of labor to assemble such an important wedding cake, and it's not hard to imagine where the extra $40,000 could go.
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