I will be making my first wedding cake in a few weeks. Am planning on purchasing the SPS system thanks to reading many posts on CC and Leah's tutorial. My bottom layer will be a 14" square cake dummy. Will be stacking 12", 9" & 6" cakes on that. Can I simply place the 12" cake on my fondant covered dummy or do I need some additional support to ensure that everything stays level? Do I need to use the SPS support in the styro dummy?

I recently did a wedding cake using a 16" dummy as the bottom tier and then a 12", 10" & 8"...I used the regular wilton stackers similar to the sps system...I did use it between the dummy and the 12" only because I needed a small gap to add a row of roses....if you look on my photos it is the blue and white wedding cake....I will say the cake was VERY sturdy...I hope this helps...

Set the lowest tier of real cake on a cardboard and set tat on the styro. Skewer it in. Then use SPS as normal.

PS, NatD "regular Wilton stackers similar to the SPS system . . ." seriously, my head just exploded.

sorry leah..i wasn't at all comparing them in quality just trying to explain to her what i used in a way that i thought was clear and could give her good visualization...sorry if my comparison offended you

Thanks, so just skewers to hold the 2nd tier in place is adequate, the styro dummy is strong enough to support the add'l 3 layers? Leah, your tutorial was very helpful, I'm ordering the SPS system tomorrow, just hope I can bake my tiers to the needed 4".

You can think of the styro dummy and a reeeeaaally tall cake board.

Thank you for the assistance, very much appreciated!!