Rita Hayworth's cake was flown by plane from Paris to Cannes. Not because of a bride's whim, but because the bakers decided it would be their gift for her wedding to Prince Aly Khan on 27 May 1949. The design was simple - cream flowers and the names "Margarita and Aly" written out with the date. The simplicity ended there: the cake was shared among more than five hundred guests, alongside six hundred bottles of champagne and twenty kilos of caviar. The bride, incidentally, wore blue, not white.

The cake is the only part of a wedding that has to be consumed. The dress is kept, the jewellery is inherited, the photographs remain. The cake exists in order to disappear, and that is exactly why so much attention was paid to it.

The most ambitious of them all belonged to Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier of Monaco, 19 April 1956. Six or seven tiers of architectural marvel, with columns, roses, sugar figures representing military and naval insignia, Monegasque motifs and angels at the top. At that moment the cake was not a dessert, it was a statement about the condition of a state.

Elizabeth Taylor married Conrad Hilton Jr in Bel Air on 6 May 1950, and the cake had five tiers with festoons and buttercream roses. Seven hundred guests shared it. Her dress was designed by Helen Rose from the studio's costume department - the detail that says the most about whose wedding it really was.

Julie Andrews married Tony Walton in Surrey on 10 May 1959; he designed her dress too. The cake was square, three tiers, with embroidered roses, both their initials, columns, scenes with dancers, fresh flowers and ribbons. Walton embroidered roses on both the dress and the cake, which is at least more consistent than most weddings.

Mia Farrow and Frank Sinatra, 19 July 1966, the Sands hotel in Las Vegas: three tiers in pink tones, Roman columns, swans, white festoons with pink drapes and rose petals. Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher, September 1955 in New York, got five tiers with festoons, pearls, flowers and hearts. Shirley Temple married on 18 September 1945 at seventeen - three tiers in pure white, with hearts, swans and pearls, and five thousand people gathered outside the church.

The most unusual belonged to Joan Crawford and Alfred Steele in Las Vegas, May 1955. Three small tiers, plenty of cream, a discreet colour and - for the first time among these weddings - figurines on top beside a tulle heart. It was her fourth wedding, a secret ceremony before a municipal judge, and he was the president of Pepsi.

Behind all that cream stands one thing rarely said out loud: not one of these cakes was chosen by the bride alone. Behind each stood a studio, a palace, a company or a hotel that wanted the picture to come out right. Here the mother-in-law performs the same function, only without the caviar budget.