A wedding cake is one of the most iconic elements of a marriage, and its ritual cutting one of the key moments in the day for the happy couple.

Beautifully decorated, coated in icing, decked with romantic flowers, or perhaps themed to match an interest of the newly-weds, the wedding cake will feature in photographs families will share fondly for a lifetime – so it is no surprise how seriously cakemaker Charmaine Northcote takes her craft.

“It always feels like an honour when people ask me to do their cake,” she says. “I know how important it is. I know how it’s got to be perfect. The only cake I was not nervous about on delivery was the one I made for my own wedding.”

Charmaine’s business is called Bake Me Elegant, and while she also makes celebration cakes, it is wedding cakes she loves making most. But the talented cake designer has a colourful and perhaps unexpected career behind her – prior to her new career creating fragile romantic sugar confections, she worked as a nightclub bouncer and in security.

She laughs about the contrast between the two roles, but explains she does not think the jobs are as far apart as you might think:

“I’m an enigma!” she smiles. “The image of security is a big burly woman, but actually what I liked about the job was being able to help people, and that side of it.

Charmaine, from Walcot in Swindon, is a member of the famous family of showmen who ran the R. Edwards and Sons fairground. She was born at Princess Margaret Hospital and grew up in the fairground world, travelling around the country and even spending three months in Singapore.

She admits it had an impact on her education: “I’m great with numbers, but I wasn’t so strong with reading and writing” – but says she took the unconventional lifestyle in her stride.

“It was just life, what we were used to,” she says. “But we did get to do some amazing things!

“We had dodgems and all different sorts of rides, and the whole fair was run by one family. Other people would open with us for a while, but mostly it was my family.”

Aged 21, Charmaine changed track and started work as a door person, for venues such as the Brunel Rooms, Destiny and Desire, and the Ministry of Sound. In 2010 she married James, and the search for a wedding cake for her own celebration inspired Charmaine, now 41, to think about a new career.

“I got into cake- making when my husband proposed. We started looking at wedding fairs and trying to find a wedding cake on a tight budget. I used to make cakes for charity when I was at school, and I started thinking, I could do better than some of these.”

She made and decorated the cake for her own wedding, then started making them friends. Gradually demand built up and she set up a business called That’s the Cherry on Top, which she changed to Bake Me Elegant three and a half years ago, when she changed her focus from celebration to wedding cakes. Entirely self-taught, Charmaine said she was most inspired by the work of cake designer Tracy James of Cotton and Crumbs.

“Her work gives me cake envy!” Charmaine said. “She does the most beautiful romantic wedding cakes.”

Charmaine makes both sponge and fruit cakes and uses a whole raft of decorating skills to craft stunningly life-like roses and other beautiful blooms from sugar paste, as well as painted lustre, finely detailed scallops made from moulds and cake lace. She makes cakes of a variety of sizes, ranging from single tier to six tiers, using all sorts of colours, ganache and fondant icing. Working closely with her clients, Charmaine comes up with a design based on the couple’s wishes, then creates the cake for their big day.

During the winter, the wedding low season, Charmaine might make six to ten cakes in a month, but during the summer, business booms.

“Last week I had six cakes to do I a week,” she says. “Some people have an exact idea of what they want, while others might come with some colours and that’s it. Some send me pictures of cakes they like, and I pull the elements together.

“Sometimes I will have a design in mind, and sometimes it will evolve as I’m working on it – almost as if the cake is talking to me."

For more information visit bakemeelegant.com.