Wedding cake is fruitcake...right?

I'm planning my wedding - very exciting! And OF COURSE my wedding cake has to be fruitcake. I mean, how could it be anything else? That is, after all, the traditional wedding cake. A certain fairly well-known couple got married last year and had a fruitcake. Surprising then, that when talking with caterers, they look askance and are vaguely surprised when I say that my wedding cake will be a fruitcake. (Yes, I'll be having a sweet table as well for those people who think fruitcake=poison, which includes the groom-to-be).

Although still traditional(or at least heard of) in England, the fruitcake as wedding cake has gone out of favor, but it wasn't that long ago when it was still the thing. I have in front of me a Good Housekeeping cookbook from 1949, and under "Three Tiered Wedding Cake" it instructs "Make 3 times recipe for Toasted Almond Fruit Cake." The thing we now think of as the wedding cake was referred to on the next page as the "Bride's Cake" and is a white cake. I have also heard the fruitcake referred to as the groom's cake, which would seem to follow if the white cake was the bride's cake.

So it seems that the groom, just like his cake, has been relegated to a back corner of the bride's wedding. In any event, THIS bride is going traditional with a fruitcake. I will definitely be adding more research on this. In the mean time I'll be looking for a sturdy serrated knife to cut that first piece.