Winter wedding cakes definitely reveal the variety in winter weddings. After all, no two winter weddings are like ... and with seasons-within-seasons reflecting holidays like New Year's Eve or Valentine's Day, there's a lot of room to move.

Still, these cakes tend to break down into popular themes:

Woodsy and Rustic. Relatively new but enchanting, this theme involves rustic notes such as bird's nests, lanterns grapevines, pussy willows, iced branches and adorable bird motifs (naturalistic ones, like chickadees).

The cake often sports some kind of cedar or pine, snow-tipped pinecones and a stunning bird-and-twig topper.

Classic Christmas. This wedding often involves hunter green, crimson, and gold. The decor's traditional, even Victorian. For the cake, you're likely to see a crisp white base with red trimmings, such as a satin ribbon or fondant poinsettias.

Winter Wonderland. All sparkle and drama, this wedding typically combines ice blue and white with plenty of crystal and silver. Cakes might involve a sparkly snowflake topper, fondant snowflake motifs, and at least a touch of pale blue.

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You can pick out some trends in winter wedding cakes that set them apart from the pack.

For example: round layers in today's popular cake-on-cake form meshes beautifully with the idea of snow and snowballs, and this is a popular shape for cakes with snowflake details.

But the gift box stacked design is much-loved too. It's often topped with a showy fondant gift bow, and sometimes, gold or silver leaf accents. Most of the time, this uses square layers, but you also see gorgeous winter cakes with a hat box (round) stacked design.

Still, many winter brides like the subtle approach, asking for magnificent white cakes that stand up to the surroundings, but don't include specifically winter patterns. Instead, they choose embossed or luxuriously draped fondant, and perhaps a touch of gold in the form of ribbons or piped details coated in gold leaf.

Finally, winter cakes tend to steer away from the cake-on-cake trend a bit. Instead, designers often use the space between cake layers to really drive home the theme. So between layers, you might see fluffy white florals suggesting snow, or glass ball ornaments in matte metallic hues.

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If you've got enormous bare-branch trees lit up with ice and twinkle lights in every corner of the room, crystal chandeliers and hundreds of candles, then you're going to want to cake that conveys that same sense of open-mouthed magic. And that means bling.

Cake designers add sparkle with silver and gold leaf, rhinestone trim, elaborate 'cake vines' and sugar gems, to name a few approaches.

And "on top" of that, cake toppers play an important role. So you'll often see silver-toned monograms coated in crystals, snowflake toppers, crystal-look toppers and sparkling fairytale castles.

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Once you've chosen your design and topper, there's still one step to go: decorating your table to best set off your cake.

Many winter weddings feature elaborately swagged cake tables, and shiny pools of gold, silver or winter blue satin below the cake stand. Beyond that, these simple additions will do more than you think to knock the whole look over the top:

White rose petals complement almost any cake. But use generously for best effect (they're cheap!)

A circle of votives around a cake looks as stunning in person as it does in photos. Add in the drama of flickering lights, and you've got great style for small investment.

Metallic ornaments are beautiful and seasonal around your cake, especially when tucked into pooled satin. Some brides have even used variously sized mirrored balls, resembling disco balls. Gorgeous!

A marabou feather boa (looks like snow) looks smashing wound around the base of a silver cake stand. Tres chic.

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