Magic the Gathering Wedding Cake Topper

For our ‘geek chic’ wedding, we of course needed a nerdy cake topper. The theme was clear to us -Magic the Gathering- since we met playing Friday Night Magic. The tough part was coming up with a topper that was themed but still somewhat elegant. We ultimately decided on a custom, light-up acrylic cake topper -made with the help of our local Duluth MakerSpace.

To start the project I created a vector image in Adobe Illustrator. We decided to use the 5 color symbols of Magic, surrounding our names and the wedding date.

Working with Joe from MakerSpace, he taught us how to format the image and prep it for reading/use by the 40 watt laser cutter/engraving machine.

The laser engraver had an arm that moved back and forth and etched our design into the clear acrylic. It then cut the piece out of the acrylic sheet.

To create a stand for the wedding cake topper and create a base to hide the lights and battery in, we had the laser cut out a series of concentric circles that increased in width. The circles were glued together to create a hollow base. The top circle was a solid circle with a slit cut out of the middle. Opaque tape was added to the interior of the base to conceal the contents.​

To create an edge-lit effect, we added LED lights directly to the base. We soldered a strip of blue lights together, including the connecting wires for the battery power.

Finally, we hot glued the LED light strip into the based of the cake topper. We left the bottom open to ensure easy access for turning the battery on and off. We ended up using a cardboard base on top of the cake to rest the cake topper on to keep its contents in place.

Below: The happy couple working on our Magic the Gathering cake topper.

Below: Joe helping us draw up schematics for our topper.

We absolutely loved how the cake topper turned out. Below you can see the final product -still full of smudges. Of course, my unprofessional photography doesn’t do it the least bit justice, but it was the perfect geeky cake topper. It made an excellent light too when the power went out for a few hours. Yep, haha, that happened -but that’s a story for another time.

Stay tuned for professional photos of the topper, our whole cake, and for a glimpse at our entire nerdy wedding.

Also, if you haven’t already looked into it, check to see if you have a local MakerSpace. It’s a great way to learn new tools and skills through classes and other members. Joe was extremely helpful and it was great to work on our cake topper ourselves. Not only did us save us money, but it was a lot of fun too.