What to Expect at a Smash Cake Session

If you have not heard of a smash cake session, the concept is exactly what it sounds like. You put a cake in front of a one-year-old and photograph what happens next. It is chaotic, it is hilarious, and the images are unlike anything else in your gallery.

Here is what the session actually looks like from start to finish.

We start with portraits

Before the cake comes out, we do a clean portrait section. Baby in their outfit, looking beautiful, no icing involved. This gives you a lovely set of first birthday portraits that you will actually want to frame.

The cake arrives

We bring in the smash cake and let baby meet it. Some babies dive straight in. Some stare at it suspiciously for several minutes. Some poke it very carefully with one finger as if it might bite them back. All of these are completely photographable and all of them are wonderful.

What follows is beautiful chaos

Icing everywhere. Expressions you simply cannot pose for. Genuine delight or genuine confusion: both make for incredible photos. This is the section that parents always say they were not sure about beforehand and then loved most afterwards.

Then there is the splash

For an additional add-on, we can follow the cake smash with a splash session: baby in a small tub of water, which doubles as a very convenient clean-up. The splash tends to bring out even more personality than the cake.

A few practical things

Bring a change of clothes for everyone in the room, not just baby. Smash cake sessions have a way of distributing icing more broadly than expected. Bring your baby's dummy or comfort item if they use one. And do not stress about the mess: that is entirely my problem.