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• wedding cake
  wedding cake

  noun

  a white cake, traditionally in tiered layers, covered with white icing and decorated.
• wedding-cake
  wedding-cake

  adjective

  highly ornate or overly elaborate.

wedding cake

¹ American  

noun

• wedding cakes
  plural

1. a white cake, traditionally in tiered layers, covered with white icing and decorated.

2. (in England) a fruit cake, similar in appearance.

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wedding-cake ² American  

[wed-ing-keyk] / ˈwɛd ɪŋˌkeɪk /

adjective

1. highly ornate or overly elaborate.

   wedding-cake architecture.

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wedding cake British  

noun

1. a rich fruit cake, with one, two, or more tiers, covered with almond paste and decorated with royal icing, which is served at a wedding reception

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• wedding cakes
  plural

Etymology

Origin of wedding cake¹

First recorded in 1640–50

Origin of wedding-cake²

First recorded in 1875–80

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

wedding cake wedding-cake

Colleton’s 1820 Greek Revival courthouse is elegant like a wedding cake.

From The Wall Street Journal ● May 24, 2026

With its butter yellow paint, green shutters, and white railings, Gracie Mansion is a wedding cake of a house overlooking the East River.

From BBC ● Dec. 8, 2025

The early embrace of sunshine as an antiseptic, formalized in New York’s wedding cake towers that were required to step back gradually from the street, soon morphed into a generalized opposition to tall buildings.

From Slate ● Jul. 23, 2025

She’s made it so intrinsic to her plot, for so many believable reasons, that it’s also the icing and the cherry on the wedding cake.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 12, 2025

We had lost invaluable family records, photographs, and keepsakes — even the slice of wedding cake Winnie was saving for my release.

From "Long Walk to Freedom" by Nelson Mandela

Not just standard wedding-cake topper, 1990s romantic-comedy love, but inclusive love.

From Seattle Times ● Feb. 14, 2024

On a summer afternoon before the crowds arrive, it’s utterly serene, a reflection of Salzburg’s wedding-cake grace.

From Washington Post ● Aug. 19, 2022

The southeastern German state now manages 45 palaces, including the wedding-cake piles of King Ludwig II, who essentially abandoned his royal duties to build some of Europe’s most ornate castles.

From New York Times ● Nov. 4, 2020

Everything is exactingly designed, from the wedding-cake Alpine hotel to the pink patisserie packaging, the postage stamps to the tassels on the room keys.

From The Guardian ● Mar. 23, 2018

There was a strange rumour in Highbury of all the little Perrys being seen with a slice of Mrs. Weston’s wedding-cake in their hands: but Mr. Woodhouse would never believe it.

From "Emma" by Jane Austen