Bridal showers are taking place all the time, but typically only once in the life of a given bride. This makes them a great and important opportunity to get together with friends and family, relax, have fun, enjoy each other and forget all of life’s routine “worries” for an afternoon.

Fortunately, even though they occur only once in the bride’s life, the bridal showers you can attend and organize are limitless, depending only on the number of relatives and friends you have that are single and open to the possibility of marriage. Bridal showers are full of activities in addition to great dishes and crowning this rare occasion is the bridal shower cake. This is usually the highlight of the day and a centerpiece for the occasion.

In its role of symbolizing best wishes to the engaged couple, a bridal shower cake should be lively and creative in design while matching the theme colors of the bridal shower. You basically have two good options when it comes to planning your “perfect” bridal shower cake.

First, a home-baked bridal shower cake is not too hard to make. Once baked, start by applying your base frosting with a butter knife. You can experiment with different colors of icing as long as they fit the planned theme of the shower, but white is usually the color of a traditional bridal shower cake. If different theme-related colors of icing will be used move them out to the edges of the cake and create some unique, original designs.

Apply gel icing on the top of the bridal shower cake with a special message for the bride and groom and let your artwork be neat and nicely designed. Use monograms of the couple’s names to give it a personal touch and finally press in some hard or soft chocolate to give it some texture. Finally, present the cake with a colorful ribbon around it.

If baking at home isn’t a good option for you, simply arrange to purchase a custom-made cake from a bakery. With this approach, you should still design the bridal shower cake, choose the ingredients, and review your ideas and concepts with the bakery. Your concepts should follow the bride’s color preferences and/or decorating theme of the shower. Working with a bakery may also allow you to get a little more intricate and unique with the shape of your cake, such as shaping it like a pair of high heels or classy handbag if the bride loves shopping (as long as the cake remains feminine and appropriate in feel). Your baker may also be able to create more intricate icing designs to give the cake an elegant, dynamic feel and help make your bridal shower cake even more of a highlight and centerpiece of the bridal shower area.

Bridal shower cake ideas are just the beginning at the BridalShowerMoments blog. Join Lindsay Maxwell and our other writers for more on bridal shower decorating, brunch, activities and more.