You could always consider making it yourself... you have plenty time to practice...

you could consider cupcakes - on average £1.00 per cake...

alternatively.. marks and sparks have birthdays cakes.. reasonably priced....

Do you know anybody that is good at making cakes? I asked a school friend on FB to make mine and am only paying £100, if not M&$ make some lovely cakes and all you have to do is assemble them. You could also try one cake or a two tiered one and fill the rest of the space with cupcakes, this would keep costs down a lot x

We got five friends to each make a tier, and MIL decorated them with flowers and ribbons. It was a lot of stress in the last week of the wedding which we didn't need, but it saved a lot of money. We provided boxes and boards for each cake and bought the icing, but all the bakers were happy to purchase the ingredients themselves.

M&$ cakes are reasonably priced and you can choose how many tiers you want to buy etc.

I totally agree with mrs K to be, M&$ cakes are really reasonably priced :). And there are lots of choices. We are getting 3 plane tiers from them and decorating it our selves. We have priced it up and it will come to about £100 including decorating icing, and a few tools :). Xx

not sure if anyone has mentioned, but i myself am not a cake person, so me and OH toyed with the ideas of Cake pops.

little bite sized peices of cake which can be decorated to your taste.

I quoted 100 for everyone and worked out much cheaper than a 3 teir cake. ive a few links if anyones interested.

Thankfully the MIL is payin for the cake, so we binned this idea. but i still think its a good quirky ones for something different.

I'm having the M&5 cake that has black ribbon round 3 tiers and it's so much cheaper than a very similar thing quoted from a cake maker. I guess I'm lucky that it's already in my colours. It they have some lovely plain ones you could ribbon up yourself or have flowers put on?

^^^ Thanks for that info Jem, very useful x

I'll make sure I run any of my quotes by you first then!! ;)

I have received one quote from someone of £160 for a 3-tier naked cake to serve 80 people.. How does that sound? How much should they generally be charging for their time do you reckon? Xx

I would happily have a go at making it myself, buuuuut, I've heard that because there is no icing to protect the sponge the cake would ideally need to be made the evening before so that the sponge doesn't dry out.. is this true? If so, I'm not sure baking a cake would be the best thing for me to do the night before my wedding hehe.. imagine!!

I am thinking about asking a friend of my auntie's if she could make it as she makes cakes for a hobby rather than for a living, so I'm sure she could do it a lot cheaper for us.. but it would be fab having a 'guide price' to go by for reference.

I have sent you a friend request, will probably message you tomorrow as I'm going to be signing off for the evening now. Thank you so much for your help x