When a wedding is between royalty, no regular old cake will do. For the betrothment of HRH William Windsor, Duke of Cambridge to Catherine Middleton, the couple commissioned an eight-tier fruitcake from pastry chef Fiona Cairns and her team to be served to their guests. With 900 floral embellishments and sugar paste rather than royal frosting, the couple's cake honored tradition while still being personalized to their own tastes.

This specimen is a small sample of a cake piece from William and Catherine's wedding. Each hand-cut cake fragment is encased inside an acrylic specimen jar and presented in one of our classic, glass-topped riker display boxes. The riker display box measures 4 1/2" x 3 1/2". A small information card is also included, which serves as the certificate of authenticity.

Looks pretty rugged, right?

Still as durable as the royal fruitcakes may be, these cake fragments have NOT been stabilized in any way. This item is intended for display only and should NOT be considered food.

It should also be noted that 14-year-old fruitcakes tend to be a bit candied in texture (i.e. sticky). So, if you open the specimen jar, they may remain adhered to the acrylic top. This is normal. Finally, some fragments will have more fruit than cake and some will have more cake than fruit, just like life.

Every wedding is accompanied by drama and intrigue, all the more so when royalty is involved. On April 29, 2011, Prince William and Catherine Middleton were married at Westminster Abbey, in sight of a guest list of nearly 2,000 and watched by millions more viewers in London’s streets and around the world.

Not since William’s own parents’ royal wedding had there been so much attention on the British royal family. The wedding brought new attention to the House of Windsor and cemented the bond between the future King and Queen of the United Kingdom.

As a child, William had to contend with the continual media frenzy that followed the breakup of his parents' marriage. After Diana’s death, the media largely gave him and his brother Harry their privacy, and by the time William attended the University of St Andrews, the future king of England lived a mostly normal college life. It was here that he met Catherine, when they were both residents of the same student hall and shared Art History classes together.

The couple began dating a few years later, and whatever privacy William enjoyed from the press soon vanished. The pair’s relationship stopped and started over the years, complicated by the pressures of William’s royal life set against Catherine’s normal middle-class upbringing. By 2007, the two had broken up but then reunited after William and Harry’s Concert for Diana, honoring their late mother. From there, it was clear William had found his future bride.

William and Catherine were engaged in late 2010 at Mount Kenya during a trip to Africa. William proposed with his own mother’s engagement ring, bejeweled with a stunning 12-carat sapphire encircled by 14 diamonds. While the moment was beautiful, it had to be tempered some by what was coming next: the herculean planning needed to pull off a royal wedding. Over the next few months, parade routes had to be planned, guests invited, the wedding dress designed, and a thousand other tasks in preparation for the big day.

Finally, after all the work for the grand celebration, Prince William and Catherine Middleton were married on April 29, 2011. As William was second in line of succession, the wedding was not a complete state occasion, offering the couple more control over their nuptials. Even so, what’s a royal wedding without the marriage at Westminster Abbey? The traditional parade went through London’s streets in the sight of thousands of attendees, all leading to the finale: the couple's balcony appearance at Buckingham Palace.

No wedding is complete without a wedding cake, and William and Catherine’s was one fit for royalty: a massive eight-tier pastry created by chef Fiona Cairns and made with her team of seven other pastry chefs. Traditionally, royal cakes are fruitcakes and their sweet taste is a major undertaking themselves. The royal cake was baked two months in advance before letting its flavors mature in anticipation of the big day. From there, the pieces were transported to Buckingham Palace to be assembled into the wedding cake several days in advance of the wedding.

Despite being three-feet tall and weighing 220 pounds, William and Catherine’s cake was considered restrained by royal wedding standards. Still, the cake’s 900 floral embellishments and its unorthodox use of sugar paste rather than royal frosting made it quite the sight. The eight-tier cake made by Cairns was not actually cut and served at the wedding, but instead served more as decoration. The actual slices eaten by guests were prepared separately and eaten at the royal breakfast on the day of the wedding. In total, 4,000 slices of cake were made, many of them prepared as souvenirs of the wedding, as is tradition.