Couple Has $16K Colossal Castle Wedding Cake Made — Complete with Lights and Tiny Renaissance Paintings

A U.K. baker pulled off a royally epic wedding cake!

For Madeline and Patrick Coyle's January nuptials, bespoke cake artist Sam Woodruff — who owns Bespoke Cakes by Sam in Essex, England — created a show-stopping, 13-foot-tall royal castle-inspired wedding cake, complete with towers and turrets, gilding and lights. The colossal confection provided the perfect centerpiece for the couple's lavish reception, held in a ballroom at the Savoy in London.

Woodruff tells PEOPLE the cake — which cost the newlyweds £13,000 (about $16,500) — took three months to construct leading up to the wedding and another six hours to set up at the reception venue, with the help of her husband.

She says she started planning the design as soon as Madeline — a long-time client of hers — announced her engagement. "There were many sketches drawn, many pencils were sharpened, many images were used for inspiration," Woodruff recalls.

"I have worked with Madeline for so long that I know her likes, I know the style and colors she likes. She pretty much gave me free rein to create the cake," she continues. "She sent me lots of ideas, my mind then built the cake, and then I had to get it on paper."

To construct the epic cake, Woodruff used six 8-inch round cakes layered in a petal design to form the base of the structure. The rest of the castle was crafted from polystyrene, which was covered in white fondant icing adorned with gold foliage.

"It isn't possible to have a design like this made solely from cake," she explains. "For one, it would be too heavy, and could you imagine cutting a slice and then messing with the balance? It would implode or topple over for sure. The eating cakes were placed around the structure to make for ease of cutting."

All told, she used more than 50 kilograms of fondant. "My arms are super solid from all the rolling exercise," she jokes.

To bring the cake to life, Woodruff added 3-D printed blue turrets and LED balloon lights to illuminate the windows. The castle was also decorated with cherubs, miniature renaissance paintings and silk flowers.

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Woodruff tells PEOPLE that one of the biggest challenges she faced with the cake was safely transporting it from her home in Essex to London. "It was a very slow journey," she remembers. "So many bumps in the road and turns!"

The castle windows were also tricky to make, she says. "The windows were very delicate. Having them cut out made the structures rather weak. They had to be padded out."

She also recounts having to live and navigate around the cake parts — which filled her kitchen and living room during the construction process — and "praying to the cake angels that the LED balloon lights that lit up the towers and the windows would last and not go out."

In the end, though, the mammoth effort was well worth it. "[Madeline] was so happy — thrilled with her dream cake in her dream venue," Woodruff shares. "She said the cake was absolutely beautiful and she was lost for words."

She says her masterpiece for Madeline and Patrick was the most ambitious project she had ever tackled in her cake-making career.

"I've made some big cakes, but nothing this size. The Madeline is certainly the biggest I have done to date. I have since done another version, where the couple flew me out to Ireland to build her," she tells PEOPLE.