Wedding cake stands are a must-have wedding accessory for cakes big or small—not only do they look beautiful, but they can also elevate your wedding cake into a centerpiece of its own. You’ll probably want to have one as a permanent fixture in your home!
For more on wedding cakes, don’t miss our selection of gorgeous spring and summer wedding cake inspiration!
Featured above: “Swept Up In His Arms” Wedding Couple Figurine, Frosted Sea Blue Bottle, Vintage Inspired Taper Candle Holder, and Silver Plated Stacked Hearts Cake Serving Set
13 of our Favourite Wedding Cake Stands
From floating wedding cakes and upside-down wedding cakes to Beauty and the Beast style bell jars and hanging dessert tables—you don’t want to miss these wedding cake stands.
1) Simple Wedding Cake Stands
A plain, simple, and unadorned cake stand (perhaps made of glass, like these gorgeous glass centrepiece ideas) is far from boring! They’re especially effective if you have a beautiful wedding cake you want to show off without it getting lost beside a more ornate cake stand.
Featured above: Glass Cake Stands from Solavia
2) Decorative Wedding Cake Stands
Add some pure wow factor to your wedding with a decorative cake stand. This can be a cake stand decorated with strings of beads or florals or an ornate, shaped cake stand like the one shown below with our lovely pressed glass mason jar favours.
Featured above: Floral Pressed Glass Mason Jar Favour with Stopper
On the other hand, you can go go all-out and make your wedding cake table itself into a cake stand, like how Sweet Hollywood covered every inch of this table with stunning flowers as well as using two pearl-strung cake stands.
Featured above: Sweet Hollywood Bespoke Cake Company
3) Themed Wedding Cake Stands
Themed cake stands cover an enormous variety of ideas, but one of our particular favourites is to use large wood slices for a rustic, country, or woodland themed wedding.
Featured above: Snowshill Cheese Wedding Cake by Cotswold Cheese Company
4) Floating Wedding Cake Stands
This is definitely one of the cleverest wedding cake stand ideas—create the illusion of floating tiers of wedding cake with clear or decorative cake stands or by arranging the tiers just enough that they cover the stand completely. It’s very effective!
Featured above: Chandelier Cake by Elizabeth’s Cake Emporium
5) A Cake Platter
We love this golden platter as a fantastic wedding cake stand alternative!
Featured above: Rectangular Serving Tray via WantItAll
6) A Cake Plate
A cake plate or flat board is one of the best wedding cake stands if your wedding cake is particularly heavy or cumbersome (the last thing you want to do is risk it falling over when moving it). They’re also great for cakes that are displayed on a table of their own—you don’t necessarily need to add any height to some cakes in order for it to draw the eye, as they’re big enough and stunning enough on their own.
Featured above: Modern Fairy Tale Monogram Acrylic Cake Toppers in Metallic Gold
7) A Bell Jar
Not only are bell jars very pretty (and reminiscent of a Beauty and the Beast themed wedding), but they also help to keep your cake or other sweet treats fresh throughout the wedding reception and keep pesky flies and wasps away if you’re having an outdoor wedding. You can get bell jars for most cake sizes, including miniature bell jars that are perfect for cupcakes, and they look wonderful when arranged together into a display.
Featured above: Small Glass Bell Jar with White Base with Geo Marble Diecut Sticker and “Yay!” White Acrylic Sign
8) An Entire Alternative Dessert Table
Some couples choose to simply use their wedding cake table as their cake stand, and Sweet Hollywood have already shown us just how stunning that can be with their floral cake table. You could step even further off the beaten track with a suspended dessert table!
Featured above: Blair Schluter Photography
9) Hanging Wedding Cake Stands
If you really want to make a statement with your wedding cake then you’ll love a hanging cake stand like this “Skyfall” wedding cake by Sweet Hollywood.
Featured above: Sweet Hollywood Bespoke Cake Company
10) Upside Down Cake Displays
Opulent weddings often have an extravagant cake—or cakes—to match. For a very quirky, creative twist, why not hang your wedding cake upside down on a decorative hook like this “Vertigo” upside down cake? Just look at this stunning design!
Featured above: Sweet Hollywood Bespoke Cake Company
11) Tiered, Afternoon-Tea Style Wedding Cake Stands
An afternoon-tea-style cake stand is most popular when used to display individual cakes for wedding guests to take home or when creating a lovely cupcake tower.
Featured above: Katie and Ian’s Superhero Themed Real Wedding
12) A Favour Table
Similarly to the tiered cake display above, we love the idea of arranging mini cakes, cupcakes, or slices of wedding cake on paper plates on a cake table in something like a dessert table or wedding favour table. Make a display out of it, like we did with the below white pumpkin favours on an aged wooden crate.
Featured above: DIY Autumn Pumpkin Favours
13) A Royal Cake Stand
And we can’t not include the magnificent, ornate golden royal wedding cake display for the lemon-and-elderflower wedding cake at the recent royal wedding.
Above: Image by Kensington Palace’s Official Twitter Account
Add Some Finishing Touches to Your Wedding Cake Stands
To finish off your wedding cake display, a lovely cake serving set and other wedding cake accessories (like cake forks and paper plates for your guests) wouldn’t go amiss.
Featured below: “Fancy Another?” rectangular “Modern Floral” tray and Ornate Gold Cake or Pie Server
Featured above: Pink Rose Floral Paper Plates and Classic Gold Cake Forks
Of course, cake stands are very versatile piece of wedding decor and can be used to beautifully display all manner of alternative wedding desserts too!
