I am new at selling my cakes...and I have a friend of my sisters that wants a wedding cake to feed 225...she wants square layers... I'm trying to decide the size...I am thinking 16", 14" & 12" OR 14", 12" & 10"...the problem that I have with the 16"...it's too large for my oven...so I may go with the 14-12-10 but I am not sure if it would feed 225 people... the Wilton site seemed to be off...does anyone have any suggestions & at what price...??

Are you going to make each tier the standard 4" tall? How elaborate are the decorations? Will it be covered in fondant or buttercream? All of these things will be deciding factors of what to charge.

For square cakes I start at $2.25/ serving. That's unfrosted, undecorated. . . The price just goes up depending on what they want.

Assuming 4" high tiers, 14-12-10 will serve 208 servings @ a wedding.

You could add an 8" tier (32 svngs) or a 6" tier (18 svngs).

SO, 14-12-10-8 = 240 svngs & 14-12-10-6 = 226 svngs.

There are lots of threads about pricing on here. It's hard to say what you should charge b/c your cost to produce could be totally different than mine as your amount you want to profit. What I will say is charge her for every serving. If she needs 225 & chooses the 240 serving cake, charge her your price/serving x 240. Why should you pay for the extra cake.

Call your customer & let her choose between the 8" tier or the 6".

(The 16-14-12 serves 298 servings!!! You would actually be saving her $$ by giving her the choice of the size of the top tier AND alleviate the issue of finding an oven big enough to bake the 16".)

I find the Wilton serving guide to be pretty accurate. For pricing consider first your costs then add on enough extra to pay yourself a good wage. So you need to consider how complex the cake will be and how long you think it will take you. My absolute cheapest buttercream cake to serve 225-250 is $575 and that is p;ain iced with fabric ribbon & piped border, price goes up from there all the way to $1300. So as you can see, the there is a lot of varience depending on what the final product will be.

You definitely don't want a 10 or 12 inch cake to be your top tier... it will look wide and flat.

As for pricing, I live about 55 mi outside of DC... starting price for 200+ servings in fondant would be about $1200.

A 10 inch cake "can" look ok as a top tier PROVIDING THE TOPPER IS PROPORTIONATE. Here's a pic of a round cake that is 12/10: http://cakecentral.com/gallery/1297422

here's the same cake with an 8" top tier: http://cakecentral.com/gallery/1297425

Figuring number of servings on square/rectangle cakes is pretty easy. A 12" cake, when cut in the industry standard 1x2x4, will be cut in 12 rows by 6 columns = 72 servings. A 14" ... cut in 14 rows by 7 columns, serves 98. A 10" ... cut in 10 rows by 5 columns, serves 50, and so on and so on.