Prince William and Princess Kate will celebrate their 15th wedding anniversary on April 29, and who could forget their historic royal wedding? From the Alexander McQueen wedding gown to the adorable flower girls, every part of that wedding was memorable, beautiful, royal—especially the eight-tiered wedding cake to rule all wedding cakes. The confection was created by Fiona Cairns, a quintessentially-British baker specializing in classic cakes and pastry designs, who shared her special memories of the experience with Country Life.
“I get goosebumps thinking about that phone call,” Fiona Cairns said. “The couple actually did reach out to us. We went to Clarence House and had a meeting with the princess and we had a cup of tea,” the baker revealed. Her eponymous bakery celebrates 40 years in business this year, but the royal wedding was her “career-defining” moment. “Three days later we received the phone call, and I will never, ever forget that.”
“The Prince and Princess of Wales (then-Prince William and Kate Middleton) asked for a classic fruit cake, which is the cake used for all the royal weddings since Queen Victoria’s day,” Cairns shared of the royal couple’s inspiration, but said every detail during the planning process had to be kept a secret. “The cake actually served for the wedding breakfast served about 600 [guests], and weighed about 70 kilos.” The final design consisted of 17 individual cakes, stacked into eight tiers, standing over three feet tall and over three feet wide.
Cairns described the whole event as “quite stressful, particularly when the queen is coming to visit you,” which definitely raised the stakes. “The wedding did feel like a family wedding but on a huge global scale,” the baker said. While this was just a family wedding to some, the family consisted of some of the most famous and respected royals in the world, but that didn’t shake Cairns and her team. “On the day of the wedding, all that mattered to myself, my husband, the team was, ‘what did the couple think of the cake?’.”
So, what did the most famous bridal couple in the world think of Fiona Cairns’ iconic bridal fruit cake? “My mobile rang [on the day] and it was actually the princess,” Cairns revealed. “She was just thanking us all for taking part in such a special day.”
