Seventy-three years after John F. Kennedy married Jacqueline Bouvier in Newport, Rhode Island, you can still order their wedding cake. Montilio's Baking Company bakes it to order, and Goldbelly ships it anywhere in the US for US$89.95.
A People story on 28 October set off the rush. The catch is that the cake in the box isn't the four-foot showpiece in the photographs. By most accounts, The Takeout included, it is the raspberry cake the guests actually ate.
The JFK Library puts more than 1,200 guests on the terrace at Hammersmith Farm, the Auchincloss family's oceanfront estate, after a ceremony at St Mary's Church.
The cake was "four feet tall" (about 1.2 metres), ordered by the groom's father, Joseph P. Kennedy.
The groom had already given one baker his blessing. Campaigning in Fall River in 1952, he stopped into Plourde's Bakery, where campaign worker Edward Berube joked that the owner could make his wedding cake.
"He certainly can," Kennedy replied, as Berube recalled to Fun107. "He's got good stuff here."
A People headline lifted it.
US searches for "jfk wedding cake" peaked on 28 October, Google Trends shows. That was the day the US magazine People ran "Jackie and John F. Kennedy's Wedding Cake Can Still Be Ordered 73 Years After Their Nuptials".
The anniversary on 12 September didn't move it at all.
The cake in the headline belongs to 1953. John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette's wedding, at the First African Baptist Church on Cumberland Island in 1996, is another story.
By most later accounts, the four-foot cake was for show.
Allrecipes describes a six-tier fruitcake weighing close to 300 pounds (about 136 kilograms), made by Plourde's Bakery in Fall River, Massachusetts.
Plourde's has since closed.
People says guests were served a "groom's cake" from Montilio's instead: three layers of white cake with raspberry jam filling and vanilla buttercream. If that telling holds, the cake in the photographs wasn't the one on most plates.
That depends on who's telling it.
Fall River credits Plourde's. Fun107 reports that Joseph P. Kennedy rang the bakery on North Main Street himself, and The Takeout casts the order as his son keeping that 1952 promise.
One Fall River telling even has the couple cutting the four-foot cake "to serve to guests for dessert", which sits at odds with the two-cake story.
Montilio's, a family bakery near Boston since 1947, claims the other cake. People reports the couple ordered it "to actually serve to the guests". Allrecipes hedges, saying it "is said to have been the groom's cake".
The recipe outlived the wedding. It was served at JFK's inauguration and at the inaugural balls of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, and Montilio's baked it again when Pope John Paul II and the Queen visited Boston.
Seventy-three years on, the best-preserved thing about the Kennedy wedding cake is the argument over who baked it.
Expect a cake for eight.
The Goldbelly listing is US$89.95, shipping included, for one cake about seven inches (18 cm) across. Prices change, so confirm when you order. It's a vanilla sponge layered with raspberry frosting and preserves, finished in buttercream, and it ships frozen on dry ice.
It keeps for up to a year in the freezer, or seven days in the fridge.
Tasting Table notes it isn't eligible for international shipping, not even to Canada.
Montilio's shops also sell The JFK Presidential White Torte, listed on its own site at US$42.75 to US$71.75 in 7, 8 and 10 inch sizes, with raspberry jam and raspberry buttercream filling. It is sold in store, with no claim to 1953.
The cake isn't the only recreation from that day.
Ten days before the wedding, a pipe burst in couturier Ann Lowe's atelier and ruined the gown and bridesmaids' dresses she had been making, the University of Delaware reports. Lowe bought new fabric and remade them in time.
The original gown, kept in Boston, is too fragile to display. Winterthur's 2023 exhibition showed a near-exact replica by fashion instructor Katya Roelse and a small team of students.
Lowe, one of the first Black high-fashion designers, got scant credit for it at the time. She had even stitched a satin bow under the skirt as the bride's something blue.
It is still one of the most copied gowns in celebrity weddings.
Planning a long guest list of your own? Decide early whether you want one cake for the photographs and another for the plates, as the Kennedys reportedly did. Find a cake maker on the Wedded Marketplace, or let Wedded Concierge find one for you.
The four-foot showpiece stayed in Newport in 1953. The raspberry cake is the one that travels now, on dry ice.
Written by
Content and Creative Manager | Wonder Group
Joseph Joshua is the SEO & Content Manager at Wedded Wonderland, bringing an editorial and search strategy perspective to the publication’s coverage of luxury weddings, destination celebrations and bridal lifestyle. His approach to content centres on helping readers move from inspiration to informed decisions, with attention to the design, craftsmanship and personal details that give a celebration its character.
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