A huge pet peeve to most wedding couples is with the caterers and reception sites.  Some of these people have the audacity to charge you a ridiculously high fee to cut your wedding cake.  Ranging anywhere from 50 cents to $3 per guest, this “fee” supposedly covers the labor involved to cut the cake, as well as the plates, forks, etc.  The real reason some reception sites charge this fee is to penalize you for bringing in a cake from an outside baker (instead of having the site bake it for you).  Even more amazing are some sites that don’t even bake wedding cakes themselves but still charge cake-cutting fees! Talk about abusive.

We say that if you are spending thousands of dollars on food and liquor, the caterer or reception site should NOT tack on $100 to $400 more just for the privilege of cutting and serving the wedding cake!

Also, you are already paying a mandatory service gratuity to have a staff present at the reception.  Hence, the cake-cutting fee is double charging.  I am not personally convinced they are even really paying the cake cutter $100-$400 for 30 minutes of work.  I would suggest trying to negotiate away this charge- don’t forget that everything is always negotiable.

Side Note:  Some caterers or sites try to sneak in the cost of serving coffee into the cake-cutting fee.  A good suggestion would be to tell the caterer to forget the cake-cutting fee and just price the coffee out separately.  If the site still insists on a cake-cutting fee, try to negotiate a flat fee, say $50 or $75, instead of a per guest charge.

Photo by GonnaGetWed.com member, The Cake Lady’s