I've been presented with an opportunity to create a large tiered cake for an event in my community. I've obviously done tiered cakes before but none of this magnitude. They would like a square 4 tiered cake that will serve as close to 500 as possible.

Of you experienced bakers out there. . . what would be your professional opinion on this as far as what size pans to use? I'm crunching some numbers and I'm not sure I can get more than around 230-250 out of a 4 tiered cake. I ordinarly use Earlene's serving chart. Judging from what I know about the venue, I'm going to assume that I won't have to rely solely on the size pans I currently have in my inventory; they should have additional ones that are hopefully larger than what I have. Even so. . . do you think that a 4 tiered cake that served 500 would appear squat? Should I suggest going to 5 tiers? Maybe I'm thinking this through wrong

Anyone able to give me their profession opinions? I guess I just need to talk it through before I get back to the venue

I've done a cake that served 520, but it was 6 tiers. When you're working with those kinds of numbers, you want tall and majestic, not short and squatty.

Unless the venue is an ice or roller skating rink, then wide could be cool.

For the base tier, I used a 16" square and 10" rounds, cut in half vertically and then jammed up to the sides of the square. Pretty, sort of flower like. Then stack on top of that.

Thank you for the validation. . . that's exactly what I was thinking!

I love you idea of using the two shapes for the bottom tier. On your cake, did you continue up as squares or did you keep the same shape all the way up?

In Australia I use 4" high tins and say that 1x1" =1 tea and coffee serve. 1x2" = a dessert serve. So that means a 10"x10" cake would be 100 tea and coffee serves.
a Cake 2x12", 2x10",2x8",2x6' would equal 676 tea and coffee serves. Half if it is for dessert, then you would have to go for 2x15' on the bottom and maybe another 8" in there. That would end up being a hugh cake. We often have the cake out the front and have some cutting cake out the back to make sure everyone gets some.
Hope you understand what I mean.