Debbie Gillespie Cake Design

My most memorable wedding was a 4-tier luggage cake with LED lights inserted into the globe top tier to form a flight path. The couple were British but had emigrated to Australia so wanted their cake to represent this. The whole thing was done via email to Australia and it was delivered to a very snowy Pennine location in the middle of winter. Stress 100% but the couple loved it and I still get emails from them about it, 4 years on!

Natural, unstructured, quirky, individual and fun

I previously won the North of England Wedding Awards 2016. This is in recognition of excellence in customer service and is based purely on customer feedback. They all commented on how friendly and easy-going the whole process was, with good communication. One of my brides also stated that if you hadn’t tasted my chocolate cake, you hadn’t lived! I have also recently been crowned Wedding Cake Designer of the Year 2019 for Yorkshire and Humberside in the I Do Wedding Awards. I was also named by Yorkshire Life Magazine as one of the 5 best wedding cake designers in Yorkshire.

Whichever wedding supplier you choose, please don’t be afraid to speak up and be true to your style. If they won’t accommodate it, find someone that will!

Any personal touches, especially those that represent shared interests, are better than anything just gleaned from Pinterest. A wedding should a celebration of a future life together so both parties should have an input.

All my wedding couples are invited for a no-obligation consultation, where they are provided with a sample selection of our most popular flavours. We then chat over the design and I will provide a detailed quotation and sketch (if required). Their date is then secured with a 25% non-returnable deposit. Alternatively, as I will only have limited capacity per week, a wedding date can be secured with a £50 deposit and the design process completed nearer the date.

I love to incorporate bold floral displays with handpainting to produce a modern but rustic look. I would suppose that my signature style would be the rustic log cakes, which are handpainted to look just like the real thing. Many people at wedding fairs are surprised to learn it is cake and want to touch it to make sure.

In October 2018, I provided a completely unique wedding cake to reflect the couple's love of fantasy, Disney and musical theatre. Their cake featured a fully handpainted footpath scene leading to a fantasy castle, flanked by 3D trees and guarded at the back by an edible hand-modelled dragon. It was totally epic and the bride's face on seeing it was a picture!

My first wedding cake was my own in 2005. Although it was a very simple design, I found the process renewed the love of art and creativity that I had had as a child, whilst at the same time producing something beautiful and tasty for someone else to enjoy. The arrival of two children meant that cakes became more elaborate and soon I was being approached by family and friends to make cakes for them.

Dare I say it - I don't watch Bake Off so I am not exactly sure what it entails. I would suppose that I would use a traditional flavour, done to perfection but with perhaps a little twist. Design wise it would incorporate all the things I love - flowers, hand-painting and a little fun.