Elvis Presley's Iconic Wedding Cake Would Cost As Much As A Car Today

When legendary singer Elvis Presley, then 32, married his 21-year-old sweetheart Priscilla Beaulieu in Las Vegas on May 1, 1967, the reception afterwards was over-the-top and somewhat unconventional. The couple's enormous wedding cake alone cost $3,200 (the equivalent of more than $31,000 in today's dollars) and the reception was held at 9 a.m., which was definitely in line with the King of Rock and Roll's own particular tastes and habits. He was extravagant, loved sweets, — his final meal was vanilla ice cream and chocolate chip cookies — and he was known for keeping odd hours.

The wedding cake is probably the best remembered part of Elvis and Priscilla's champagne reception for their 100 guests held at the Aladdin Hotel that also included suckling pig, oysters Rockefeller, and lobster. Photographs of the couple with their monstrous cake were reproduced in newspapers across the world. The six-tiered behemoth stood five-feet tall, used 20 pounds of Crisco to produce, and included nearly 50 small sugar hearts and 500 silver dragées, the tiny metallic-seeming sugar balls you often see on desserts.  The cake was designed by the Aladdin's head chef, Bjorn "Bill" Jaeger, and executed by its pastry chef, Denis Martig.  The price tag was equivalent to the cost of an average Chevrolet at the time and could still get you a new Kia or Hyundai today.

Bill Jaeger's design for Elvis and Priscilla Presley's wedding cake, besides the sugar hearts and dragées, also included red marzipan roses, the couple's names on the second tier from the top, and a plethora of other intricate decorations. As for the cake itself, it was a yellow sponge cake. "Each layer was filled twice with apricot marmalade and a kirsch flavored Bavarian cream," recalled Chef Denis Martig (via Memphis Magazine). Kirsch is a German spirit distilled from black Morello cherries and is considered one of the best types of booze to add to cake. 

Kirsch also made it into the fondant icing that glazed each layer. The cake also included royal icing, which is mainly made from powdered sugar and egg whites that produces a hard smooth surface (the kind of frosting often found on traditional holiday cookies). It was a cake fit for the king and his new bride, along with all the other trappings, that took two weeks to produce and cost $10,000 just for the breakfast buffet. And while the cake will go down in culinary and pop-culture history as iconic, the Presleys' marriage didn't fare as well. They divorced in 1973, and Elvis died four years later.