Okay, I am new to wedding cakes, so please bear with me. I need to know how much cake I would need for "x" amount of guests for an anniversary party. I know how to figure how many servings to get out of a cake, I just need to know if there is a general rule, or equation to know how much cake to provide.

For example:
There will be appetizers and some other dessert for the guests, so if for instance, there were 150 guests coming - would I make enough cake for 150 people, 75% of the people, 50%.......???? What is the rule of thumb to go by?

Thanks so much!

For weddings, I advise brides to plan for 60% of the total number of people invited, unless she has one of my exceptions. Please note that is 60% of the number of people INVITED .... not 60% of the number of people EXPECTED to actually show.

Open House events (like anniversaries), and destination wedding receptions (they got married two months ago in Jamaica and are having their reception now), tend to have higher show-rates and are more difficult to predict.

Bottom line, however, is if your client pays for cake for 150, then you make cake for 150.

here's the wilton wedding chart that I go by: http://www.wilton.com/wedding/wedding-cakes/wedding-cake-data.cfm

Here's a step by step on how to cut a weddign cake to achieve those serving amounts (actually, I get about 10% more when cutting the cake this way): http://cateritsimple.com/_wsn/page10.html