The ceremonial wedding cake often is grand and elaborate, and many brides choose the design as carefully as they do their gowns.

Occasionally, a bride will decide to make her own cake or will accept the offer of a talented relative or friend. It can be done, although many wedding planners discourage it. The best way to manage a homemade cake is to consider baking two or three small cakes with fewer tiers, which makes the task easier to handle in a home kitchen. The cake's design can be simply decorated but still imply elegance.

King Arthur Flour has an online cake decorating class that offers simple instructions. "You can do wonders with basic tips and a vegetable peeler," said Susan Reid, chef and editor of King Arthur Flour's The Baking Sheet newsletter. Go to www.kingarthurflour.com, click on education, then click on "online baking classes/take a class now."

"It's the first class that comes up," Reid said.

Reid also recommends two books for aspiring wedding-cake bakers: "Wedding Cakes You Can Make," by Dede Wilson, and "The Bakers' Manual" by Joseph Amendola.

"Dede's book has all of the basics, nuts and bolts, in clear and useful terms. Joseph Amendola's book is an all-purpose manual for volume bakers; has good cutting diagrams and bulletproof recipes; for a slightly more advanced baker," she said.

There are some other things to consider before baking a wedding cake.

"Make sure you have refrigerator space to accommodate all of the cake layers you're making. You may have to commandeer space from a friend or borrow a dorm-sized refrigerator for some of your work in progress," Reid said.

The cake-decorating experts at Wilton Enterprises offer ideas and helpful tips on their Web sites, www.wilton.com and www.bakedecoratecelebrate.com.

In "Wedding Cakes You Can Make," Wilson takes the baker through the entire process, from choosing the flavor to the presentation table.

Experienced cake decorators can find ideas in Colette Peters' "Cakes to Dream On." Peters shares insider tricks of the trade with her instructions for techniques such as sugarwork, gumpaste, brush embroidery, and piping.

Her cakes are covered with rolled fondant, which is more complicated than using a buttercream icing. But for ideas, her book will definitely stimulate your creative instincts.