Unique Theme Ideas for Your Wedding Cake

Theme weddings can launch some truly creative wedding cake ideas — ones that delight the eye and mind as well as the tastebuds.

Need a beautiful idea for a medieval theme wedding? Try a cake laced with pearls and topped with a golden crown. On the other hand, adventure-loving couples can top their cake with mini figurines of the newlyweds in a small plane or a motorcycle. If you're planning a Victorian theme wedding, try a cake draped in bows and Victorian roses. Or for an Oriental themed wedding, a two-tiered cake topped with an orchid-filled vase is elegance itself.

Your wedding cake theme could reflect your love for a favorite flower ... sunflowers, pansies, birds-of-paradise, roses. A talented cake designer can actually replicate your bridal bouquets in sugar and fondant. Or for a down-home look, order up a garden that mirrors your yard, complete with picket fences.

Then, there are seasonally themed cakes — which give your designer license to let his imagination run wild. For fall weddings, you could opt for a cake garnished with grapes, grape leaves and chrysanthemums. Summer-themed wedding cakes look as cheerful and bright as the season with fondant bows and white daisies.

Even more dramatic are the wedding cakes based on favorite crystals and jewels. The diamond lover can have a stunning diamond-themed cake, studded generously with edible crystals — though this can be an expensive option. Want the exotic look of jade? With cake, you can create an entire stack of complex, jade-like slabs. It's even possible to base your cake on a china pattern. In fact, with the new edible technologies, some bakers can actually scan any pattern you please and affix it, picture-perfect, to your cake's fondant shell.

For a truly unique wedding cake, have a heart-to-heart with the cake designer, giving both of you plenty of lead time. Though there's always that urge to come up with an incredible design by yourself, you'll probably find it helpful to pick the brains of a pro who does "incredible" for a living.