Wedding Photographers & Officiants Reveal How They Can Tell If A Couple Will Divorce By Their Wedding Cake
There seems to be a correlation between cake and conflict and wedding professionals have noticed it.
Gorodenkoff / Shutterstock It's easy amid the romance and festivity of a wedding to feel like the new couple's love couldn't ever run aground.
However, according to those in the wedding industry, there's a universal indicator for marital success that happens during the reception, and it's not what most of us might expect.
Wedding photographers and other professionals said they can tell if a couple will divorce by how they handle their wedding cake at the reception.
Cramming cake into each other's faces has long been a fun wedding tradition, but lately, it seems to have crossed some kind of line.
There has been an influx of shocking videos of grooms taking the cake tradition way too far and sometimes ruining their new wives' day in the process.
If you've watched one of these videos and cringed at what looks awfully like a thinly veiled act of aggression… well, you might be onto something.
What's always striking about these cake-smashing videos is how out-of-balance they seem. The groom is having fun, while the bride appears furious and humiliated. That's certainly no coincidence, of course, and according to people in the wedding industry, it not only means something — it means everything.
Wedding professionals say 'cake smashing' is highly correlated with divorce and it has been for years.
Over the summer, the internet became embroiled in a debate about "cake-smashing" amid several uncomfortable viral videos about it. One even featured a couple who ended up divorcing, reportedly on the same day as their wedding.
But the cake-smashing-to-divorce pipeline isn't just a fleeting social media trend. Wedding professionals have talked about the correlation for years.
"I swear that all of the couples that have split up have smashed the cake in their [significant other's] face," a wedding photographer said in a 2019 Reddit post, in which people asked wedding professionals for their "sixth sense" about marriage failures.
Another photographer agreed. "To me, the biggest sign is the cake cutting. Usually, the couple is in sync" with the cake-cutting ceremony. But when they're not? "All of those relationships that I have kept up with have ended in a divorce."
Photo: Helgy / Canva Pro
Echoing the many online who felt cake-smashing was a clear sign of underlying aggression, a wedding videographer called this kind of cake-smashing disconnect a "microcosm of how the couple feels about each other" and pointed to an "unbalanced" relationship ripe for a rift.
A pastor said that after years of officiating weddings, he noticed four key dynamics in aggressive cake-smashing incidents.
Back in 2013, pastor Kevin Thompson relayed the first time he ever witnessed this weird act of aggression, at the first wedding he ever officiated. "He pushed [cake] into her face; she pushed it harder into his; and he forced her to the ground. The crowd laughed; I was shocked; and a few weeks later they were divorced."
After watching myriad incidents like this, he narrowed down four "cake-smashing" dynamics he said were red flags for the success of the union:
- Excessive force was used to smash the cake.
- The cake smash was a sign of revenge.
- The cake smash was a sign of pride.
- There was outright contempt palpable during the cake-cutting ceremony.
There is one way to avoid this, of course. As a wedding planner told Inside Edition, couples should discuss the cake-cutting part of the wedding beforehand and express their preferences to avoid these mishaps.
But given how many of these cake-smashing incidents aren't mishaps at all and rather obvious acts of aggression, it doesn't seem likely a conversation about it will be enough to keep these couples out of divorce court.
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice, and human interest topics.