Unique, Personalized Wedding Cake Toppers

As modern weddings continue to bring creative touches into traditional themes, wedding symbols, like the wedding cake, become a venue to display the couple's personalities. Personalized, custom wedding toppers are the perfect, unique addition for couples who do not want a cookie-cutter reception.

Personalized wedding toppers may be humorous, such as the bride lugging a hesitant groom up the side of the cake. Or a toe-tapping bride waiting impatiently for her busy groom to finish a cell phone call. Is your fiancé a sports fanatic, fisherman or golfer? Consider having his wedding cake topper character dressed in his favorite hockey jersey or lugging a set of golf clubs.

Skilled artists can recreate the bridal couple's facial expressions, wedding attire and even make a miniature version of the bride's wedding dress. The following are two of the top artists with online based businesses who will create your personalized wedding toppers based on your ideas, designs and photographs.

Clay Figurines House

Cesar Basanez, of Cancun, Mexico, has found a successful niche with his online business ClayFigurines.com. The 6.5-inch-tall personalized wedding toppers by Basanez are individually crafted of Polimerclay, which hardens and retains its color and detail when baked. Polimerclay is the same material used to make tiny crafts for dollhouses, so the material works great for personalized details, like T-shirt designs, facial expressions and other accessories.

Customers send in their photographs to ClayFigurines.com and give information about the wedding such as the bouquet flowers, colors, and the pose they want their wedding topper characters to be in. A basic wedding topper couple starts at $179 but additional figures, pets and vehicles may be added for a cost. After ordering, customers should allow at least 30 days for the completed wedding toppers to be produced and shipped. The ClayFigures.com site features a gallery with customers posing next to their mini clay versions so you can judge how well the artisan captures each person.

Shireena Celebration Sculptures

For the bride and groom with a larger budget, and an eye for minute details, Artist Carol Shireena Sakai of Shireena Celebration Sculptures will hand sculpt a one-of-a-kind wedding topper beginning at $750. Her gallery features sculptures with themes for destination weddings, frustrated brides waiting on their golfing or fishing hubbies, motorcycles get-aways or even traditional poses with special touches like hand signs and facial expressions. These wedding cake toppers can also mimic the wedding dress and grooms attire. The level of detail quality is much higher for these sculptures than other personalized wedding topper sites. Curious customers can also view a step-by-step presentation with photos illustrating the process the artist uses on each sculpture.

The sculpture take about a month to be completed and shipped but rush orders are available for at least $150 fee, possibly more depending on the design and time frame. The website also gives detailed instructions for submitting photographs to get the best possible likeness on your wedding topper sculptures.

TIps for Great Wedding Toppers

- Jot down ideas for the wedding topper pose. Don't feel limited to a bride and groom standing pose. The artists listed above have used fishing boats, airplanes and golf courses as settings for wedding toppers in their galleries. Consider incorporating your hobbies and shared interests.

- If you don't feel a funny wedding topper is appropriate for your traditional wedding cake, consider doing it for the grooms cake. Personalized cake toppers can also be fun for bridal showers and make great favors for the bridesmaids later.

- Send lots of good photographs of you and your fiance to the artists. Follow the photo guidelines carefully. Take close up photos of the face as well as full-length shots. Sakai also recommends taking photos of your face from above and below to help her with accuracy.

- If you want clothing (sports or concert T-shirts or the wedding dress) recreated, be sure to take many detail shots of the prints and details on the items. If you want a sculpture of you in your wedding dress, try to send photos of you actually in the dress if possible.

- If you have pets that are a big part of the family, let them be part of the wedding by including them in the wedding topper. Or if you and your fiance already have a child, include them in the wedding topper as well.

- Try to allow more than the recommended month in case something happens. If possible, give the artists three months to complete and ship your sculpture.

- Assign an official wedding topper guard at your reception. Their job is to make sure the wedding topper gets removed and safely stored away before guests dive into the cake. This will be one less thing you have to worry about to make sure your keepsake, expensive topper is still in good condition after the reception.