I'm making my first wedding cake for my nephew's wedding this weekend.

I have frozen the large layers already and will be working on the remainder tonight. I'm doing a very basic 3 tiered cake 14, 10, 6 buttercream with swiss dots, black ribbon around the edges and roses between.

How do I keep the plastic cake plate from showing? Obviously I know I will have the cakes on boards and the boards on the plates but I don't want the plastic plate to show.

Can I use an 8" plate under the 10" board? Will I have enough stability? How have you guys been able to do this? I have seen so many cakes done like this where the plates don't show...just need to know the best method...

I'm starting to feel the nerves a little bit now that it's getting closer. I've never used columns before so this is my first attempt. I bought both the column picks and the regular round ones because I'm not sure which to use. I feel like the round ones will be more stable.....

HELP!!!!

Once the six in cake in on the six inch plate and you ice it the plate should not show same with the 10 inch. Use the board/plate as a guide while icing.

A couple other things- by roses in between, it sounds like you are talking about cakes separated by pillars. If this is the case, use push in pillars if at all possible. They are very simple to use. You can take the cake to the reception in separate pieces and then stack them there. To stack cakes with push in pillars, attach the pillars to the underside of the plate and then gently press them all at once down into the cake below. I have tried to line them up and push them in first and then put on the cake above, but it was not as stable and not as straight.

Secondly, if the roses are to completely fill in the space between the tiers, order a lot. More than you think you will need. Don't trust the florist to supply the right amount. You will end up robbing roses from the table decorations to complete your cake.

IF you are not using pillars, then sorry for the useless info.

Lastly, if the ribbon that you are putting around the edge is real, you may notice that it starts to get spots that are wet from the buttercream. I freaked out the first time this happened to me, but then the whole ribbon got evenly wet and you couldn't even tell. If you are worried about this though, I have heard there is a way to put a barrier between the ribbon and the cake... parchment or something. Good question for someone besides me, I have not tried it.

I hope that is not too much info, I have just had some trial and error in some of these kinds of cakes and hope that I can save you some trouble.

Thanks so much for everyone's help!! It's finally over and I can breathe now...pretty pleased with the results. I'll upload pics soon!!