People Turning 30 Are Doing Their Own Cake Smashes

Let’s be honest: Birthdays as an adult are just never as good as birthdays as a kid. You’re busy, you may have to work, you feel old, you have to plan your own party, and you’re expected to be, you know, mature (ugh). Enter the adult cake smash, a tasty, messy new birthday tradition for grown ups who just want to have their cake and smash it all over their faces, too. If you’ve ever watched your 3-year-old nephew smear cake all over himself at his birthday party and thought, “Kid, you don’t even know how good you have it,” then this cake smash might be your new best friend. (Also, can I just say up front that I love the phrase “adult cake smash”? It sounds to me like something the Incredible Hulk would do. Adult cake SMASH!)

The ingredients for an adult cake smash are simple: A cake (obviously), champagne (OBVIOUSLY. There has to be something good about being an adult), a tutu, a crown, and a photographer to record it all for posterity. Most people tend to have their smashes on significant birthdays (the big ol’ 30 seems to be the most popular date), and the majority of smash-ers seem to be women, though there are men here and there who do it, too (and why not? Everyone loves cake).

Photos from these parties-for-one usually show the birthday girl (or boy) wearing a crown and tutu and sitting on the ground. Cake smasher Kara Waggoner, 30, told The Washington Post of the skirts, “I think it just makes you feel like a princess. You’d be surprised by how many adult tutus there are.”

Once everything is set up, the star of the shoot proceeds to eat his or her cake, toddler-style, without utensils. If that means cake ends up all over his or her face, all the better.

Doesn’t this look like the MOST fun?

It’s a perfect way of saying, “I may be getting older, but that doesn’t mean I have to act like it.” Cake 4 life!

Images Courtesy of Layna Rae Photography, Ann Ishii Photography, Jen's Photography, and Elyssa Glover Photography.