Cake: cupcakes or tiers?

We did 3 tiered cake and researched portions by guests servings. Knowing we didn't have any extra left behind, assorted pastries were also served as an alternative choice to others beyond family.

Guest count 72

Cake servings 36

Pastries 36

Keep in mind not all guests have a sweet tooth, its nice to have a choice for guests to have a cupcake if not wanting a slice of cake. You choose what is best for you both knowing how many tiers will work to feed your guests.

I’ve tried both cake and cupcakes, and I always prefer a slice of cake. It’s moist and a cupcake is just more dense.

Size matters...when it comes to cooking. Since they're such different shapes and sizes, they will either have different bake times or temperatures, which will affect consistency. It would be like offering you a piece of chicken breast for a tasting when you're looking to have chicken leg.

The place we'll likely get our cake at sells small slices so we managed to try quite a few without breaking the bank (and killing our stomachs). We're going to stick with regular cake instead of cupcakes since it'll be served as dessert.

We also got cupcakes for our tasting- and got a small cake this year on our original date- we definitely preferred cake to cupcakes as well!!

Huh that’s interesting that they tasted that different! I guess one of the main differences between cakes and cupcakes is that a tiered cake takes more care to make. So the bakery would want to ensure everything was as perfect as possible, from the baking time to the evenness of the icing layers. Cupcakes can be done really fast and they don’t need the same structural support so it doesn’t matter if they aren’t done as perfectly. Maybe that affected the taste? Or it could totally just be the amount of icing lol.

We were offered cupcakes and a slice. We want cupcakes for guests and then a small cake for cutting for our reception. The cupcake flavours that we chose are generic ones that the bakery keeps on hand every day, then the cake was made specially for us so we ended up taking the whole thing home after lol. Depending on the bakery's policy on freshness you may be given cupcakes that were baked the previous day and so don't taste as fresh as a specially baked cake. So that might have been what you experienced? I personally don't find a difference when cake/cupcakes are both baked fresh which I expect to get for my wedding and said as much to the owner when we went for our tasting.
But if you like the cake to frosting ratio better with the cake then you can also ask to have less frosting on the cupcakes if you do decide to go with them still.