Butterflies Wedding Cake - A Decorating Tutorial

This cake is my first butterflies wedding cake. I designed it to match the wedding theme color of dark purple and gold and the bride's request to have lots of butterflies on the cake. She did not want too many colors on the wedding cake, and so I decided to come up with a white cake adorned with decorations in shades of dark purple and gold.

A 3 tier white wedding cake decorated with cascading gum paste hydrangea and butterflies in purple

A pretty, butterflies wedding cake with elegantly cascading gum paste butterflies and hydrangeas

The wedding cake itself was quite easy to assemble, the only time-consuming process was making the hydrangeas and the butterflies. Even then, once I got the hang of it, they were pretty fast to make.

How to Make a Butterflies Wedding Cake

These were the supplies and decorations I used for the butterflies wedding cake:

Cake - This was a 3 tier cake, measuring 12 inches, 9 inches, and 6 inches in diameter. Each tier was approximately 6 inches high. The cake itself was made using my butter pound cake recipe and since the height was 6 inches instead of my normal 4 inches, I multiplied my recipe for each tier by 1.5 times.
Buttercream - Each cake was layered and sandwiched with buttercream. I also used buttercream to crumb coat the cake.
Fondant - the entire covered was in white fondant. I also covered the cake board with fondant. I used Satin Ice white fondant.
Gold ribbon - I purchased this ribbon from a local craft shop and is non-edible.
Gumpaste hydrangea - I made these a few days in advance with white Satin Ice gum paste. I dusted them with violet food dust in the centers to match the overall theme color for the wedding cake. Click here for step by step tutorial on how I made these flowers.
Gumpaste butterflies - I made these butterflies in advance and in 3 sizes - large, medium, and small. They were made using white gum paste and then dusted with violet food dust once they were dried. Click here for step by step tutorial on how I made these butterflies.
Fondant glue - I used fondant glue to adhere the flowers and butterflies to the cake. This is so that the butterflies and flowers were totally secured to the cake.

How to assemble the cake:

I started by preparing the wedding cake. Each tier was leveled, sandwiched, crumb coated, and covered in fondant separately. I then stacked them and used bubble straws as support. I also covered the cake board with fondant and then attached a gold ribbon around the base and the cake board. The ribbon was attached around the cakes with fondant glue and on the cake board with hot glue.

3 tier white cake with gold ribbon border

Once that was done, I used white fondant, rolled it into thin strips and attached it to the stacked wedding cake with some shortening. The strips were not meant to be seen after all the flowers and butterflies have been attached to the wedding cake. They were purely a guide for me to position the flowers and butterflies so that I get them all in a consistent curve around the cake.

The flowers

Once I was happy with the guide line, I started with the flowers.

Gum paste hydrangeas in flowers formers next to a cake

I attached the flowers with fondant glue close to the fondant strips earlier, and in doing that trying as much as possible to cover the strips so that they are not visible once the flowers were all attached.

Attaching gum paste hydrangeas on a white cake

Gum paste hydrangeas in purple on a white cake

I then added more flowers on the sides such that I get a wider arrangement at the bottom of the cake and a gradually narrower arrangement as it reaches the topmost cake layer.

This was the arrangement on the second layer:

And this was the arrangement on the top cake. I ended the flowers right on top of the cake.

And here was how the completed hydrangea flowers arrangement on the wedding cake looked like:

A three tier cake with cascading gum paste hydrangea flowers

The gum paste butterflies

Once the flowers were all put on the cake, the next step was to attach the butterflies. As I have mentioned above, I had the butterflies in 3 sizes. I used the largest ones for the bottom layer, the medium-sized ones for the middle layer, and the smallest for the top layer.