So I'm making a 4-tier stacked wedding cake that will be traveling a couple of hours away. She is picking up the cake and it must be assembled when she picks it up. My question is the use of dowels. My local candy/chocolate/cake supply shop owner said I need to put one long dowel through all tiers to prevent sliding. How do I do this? If, as I've read, you must use a cake round for each tier how do you get the dowel through the board? HELP!

The long dowel through the middle isn't too hard to do. I take a long dowel and sharpen one end to a point. Take the pointed end and run it through the tiers. When I get to a cake board I use a smaller hammer and just tap it so it goes through the boards. Good luck!

Thats how I do it too! Make sure you put dowels in each tier as well- the cakes shouldn't be sitting on eachother they should be sitting on the dowels. I struggled with this the first couple times and the dowels were too long and you could see them between the layers. Just remember not to put any in the center as that is where your long one will go. Micheals has the dowels- some in the Wilton area and some in the wood area- the wood section is cheaper and you can get bags of them for a couple bucks and then get the longerm one for going directly through. I also bought the little mitre box and blade for easy cutting. You dont' want the dowel any bigger around than a pencil and then use a pencil sharpener to sharp the end before you put it through. I don't sharpen mine to a real sharp point and have had no problems with it going through. But one harder tap with the hammer to get it through the board is going to do less damage than being scared and tapping it. The board will begin to buckle in the centre.
Hope this helps!

Thanks, guys. I feel a lot better!