I am making a friends wedding cake (1st one) for her present. Hopefully the pic has attached! As it is a very tall cake, it will require a lot of cake when there are only 80 guests. Would it be advisable or even more sensible to use dummy cakes for some of it and whereabouts? for the whole of one layer? or as each layer is very deep, could i do bottom half of layer with dummy and top half with cake, would this work? is there a problem with 'matching' them together to make the join seemless (although there is a row of piping around the middle of each tier) . Or would i be better just making it all in cake but just smaller tiers say 6" 8" and 10"
Any thoughts would be much appreciated!

I would make the bottom tier cake and the next two tiers cake dummies...I wanted to make my Mom a large birthday cake, but I knew that she would never eat that much so I made the bottom tier cake and the next two tiers cake dummies....I made the bottom layer cake because it is heavier than styrofoam. It is the large koi cake in my photos. I think it is a great way to make a tall cake when you only really need a small amount of servings.

Yes good idea but the bride wants a small fruit cake as well as sponge, which is why I thought doing each tier half dummy and half cake, would this be ok??

PS loved the Koi cake!

I think that each tier being 1 real cake and 1 dummy will work fine.

Im happy that you opened up this forum.. i also have the same question.. i want to make a big tall cake for my grandmothers birthday .. if i make the bottom tier actual cake and the 2 other tiers dummies do i have to use dowels on the fake dummies?

One does NOT need to dowel the styro/fake 'cakes'. One should dowel the real cake if there are tiers above i t.

Example - for a 6 to 8" tall tier I would put 3 or 4" of styro as the bottom part of the tier and 4" of real cake as the top part. NO doweling would be needed.
If another tier is put on top of that cake then I would dowel the real cake part only. In other words, just use 4" tall dowels. I actually would use straws rather than wood dowels.

I constructed the cake I talk about in my earlier post by measuring a large dowel that would be the depth of the bottom layer plus four inches...then inserted the dowel into the bottom of the middle cake dummy to make a hole then removed it. I then covered all the cakes with fondant. The top and middle cake dummies where then stacked using a dab of royal and long toothpicks to put the top and middle layer together. I hammered the center dowel in the real cake and into the cake board leaving four inches of the dowel sticking out of the top of the cake. I did still use four small dowels and a cardboard round.....like this...cake board..dab of buttercream...fondant covered cake...large center dowel sticking out...four smaller dowels cut level with cake top...dab of buttercream..cardboard round with hole in center...dab of royal on cardboard and on center dowel...slide cake dummy onto center dowel...decorate.
I didnt have any problems removing the cake dummies so that I could cut and serve the bottom tier.. I brought the cake dummies home...ran a sink of hot water, let them soak and the icing melted off. I hope this helps.