Hello everyone and thanks for reading this!
I am doing a 3 tier wedding cake for family and dont have much experience with stacked cakes yet, although I think I do know what Im doing I am looking for opinions from all of you which are experienced on your preferences for tier sizes of 3 tiered wedding cakes. What do you think is best aesthetically? Now this wedding only needs to feed 50 people but they have said they'd like to save the top tier for their 1st anniversary. This will be all b/c with flowers.
Also does anyone know of a website that shows photo comparisons of tier sizes?
Thank you all so much for your help.

Wilton has a really nice page showing and discussing tiered cakes. Here's the link http://www.wilton.com/cakes/tiered-cakes/ HTH!

A 6/8/10 cake serves 74, so if you only need 50, that's about as small as you can go.

Here's one of my 6/8/10's: http://cakecentral.com/modules.php?name=gallery&file=displayimage&pid=1472398

I agree with indydebi don't think you can go much smaller than that and I like a 2" gap between tiers. Sometimes I do a 3" gap between sizes depends on the design and cake required. You didn't say if you were doing a round or square or another shape as that will make a difference on how many servings you will get from each cake

Also what kind of decorations are you doing? If you're just piping on the sides then the if you do a 6/8/10, you will have plenty of room for a small border. If you're doing flowers or something that might stand out more, you might like a 3 inch or even 4 inch different between the sizes. You can do 6/9/12 and gives you just a little more distance.

Also do you already have pans. If the cake is a gift, I'd use the pans I have to avoid the expense of buying more pans And don't buy the Wilton 9 inch round pans. The sides are not straight. Their 8 inch for me was fine but their 9inch is not straight.

Good luck.

Thank you all for your help as well as the picture IndyDebi.
I will be doing all rounds.
So do you think 6, 8 and 10 is my best option?

Honestly I was debating still if I might use flowers along the border or just the top. That's a good point though, Ill keep it in mind. I do have most of the pans I would use. Thanks for your help!

If they are keeping the top tier and you only want to serve 50 people cake AT the wedding, then, yes, 6", 8", and 10" rounds are your best option with 74 servings. The 6" serves 12, so you would have 62 servings of cake when you save the 6".

Keep in mind that wedding servings are 1"x2", so if you cut any bigger than that, you may not have enough cake for everyone. And I ALWAYS make each tier 4"-5" in height. A wedding cake does not look good if it's short and squatty. Unless you are making a cake in varying heights. Which is a whole other topic.

Hi,

I'm probably slightly late in responding here but there is a great site which not many people seem to know about yet. I stumbled across it on a google search. It's www.bakingit.com. They have a calculator that will show you different tier combinations and you can even sketch out your ideas so you can see what your cake will look like and how many people it will feed. It's brilliant :-) 

ASlightly late by a few years, yeah [@]Katebaker[/@] Lol.....but it's good information either way. ;-)