How to do a DIY Cake Smash

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For Dexter’s 1st birthday I really wanted to do a cake smash, but when I went online to look at how much it would be to pay someone to do it professionally I was very taken aback. What with being on maternity leave for so long and saving for a house, I did not have hundreds of pounds to pay for someone to do it for us, so decided to do it myself.

There are a few key things you need to do a cake smash at home:

• A suitable clear area
• A cake smash outfit
• A backdrop
• Decorations
• A cake
• A decent camera

I really wanted to make it as simple and as cheap as possible, so my first port of call was eBay. I had scoured Pinterest for cake smash ideas, themes and colour schemes and decided to use teal and white as our colour scheme. From eBay I purchased a plastic teal tablecloth, a fabric white tablecloth, teal balloons, white tissue paper pom poms, ‘I AM ONE’ bunting and an outfit for Dex. His outfit consisted of a vest with ‘ONE’ written on it in golden letters, braces, shorts and a gold party hat (although this got torn off and broken early on!)

We started by clearing an area in our living room for the cake smash to take place. We removed all the furniture so we were left with a big open space that we could decorate. We fixed the teal tablecloth to the wall as a backdrop before adding the white tablecloth to the floor. To decorate the area further ee blew up six balloons to leave floating on the floor and made up the tissue paper pom poms. We hung the ‘I AM ONE’ bunting so it hid the sockets visible behind the tablecloth and we were good to go!

We bought the chocolate cake from Costco and it cost less than £10. I do enjoy a bit of baking but by the time you have bought of all the ingredients and spent the time baking, it is so much cheaper just to buy a cake. The ones in Costco are made fresh everyday and taste amazing.

When it was time for the cake smash, we simply put the cake on the floor, put Dexter next to it and let him go for it. He spent around five minutes tasting the cake carefully before trying to wander off. We gave him another few minutes before he had had enough and we gave him a quick bath.

What was fab about doing the cake smash at home was all of our family who came to the party were able to watch it which they loved. Best of all everything cost me less than £50!

If I were to do it again I’d make sure I knew what sort of set up I wanted before I started. Originally I put the teal tablecloth on the floor and because it was plastic it got ruined when Dex had a crawl over it when my back was turned for thirty seconds. It being plastic also showed up every little crease in it. I would probably choose a fabric one next time.

Secondly, I’d have the bath ready and waiting for Dex to be plunked in afterwards. It was a bit of a faff trying to get him washed and dressed again while we still had guests at the party- preparation definitely would have been key!

Were the photos as good as if a professional had taken them? Well obviously not, but in all honesty I couldn’t justify spending the same amount of money that I would spend on a short holiday for a few images on a USB stick. I am happy with the images we captured and don’t regret doing it at home.

What do you think? Would you do a DIY cake smash?

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