I am planning to bake a wedding cake for my brother and his bride to be's wedding.  I have baked sheet cakes and smaller cakes, but never a wedding cake.  They are having 150 guests and I am doing this from my apartment.  Should I count on 150 or increase the servings to about 170? We ae looking at 2 double 2" layers and they are not interested in saving the top layer? I am a little nervous about this one.

Batterbake- Since you are new to cake central you may not know of Debi Brim, she has posted some excellent information about catering for weddings. If you go to this site, you can read her information about headcounts for weddings.  http://cateritsimple.blogspot.com/2011/02/i-can-save-you-1000-right-here-right.html#comment-form

Translation = she'd say, if 150 are invited assume 90 will show up.

She also has excellent advice on how to cut the cake.

ANarie, Thank you so much. Sounds like we will save a lot of time and money. I will certainly check out her site.

I advise my brides that they should count on 70 to 75%.  I don't know what has been going on lately, but a couple of times (last minute) I have had to add a cake to cut in the kitchen to make sure they had enough cake.  3 brides in a row have reported 90 to 95% of those invited were attending.  I was a guest at one of the weddings I baked for in August.  The bride invited 200 and decided to order cake for 175.  179 people attended and their were only 4 pieces of cake left. 

Thank you kblickster.  I will keep that in mind.  I like the idea of having another cake.  We were thinking of doing the bottom tier as a 16", but I think I would feel much more comfortable doing a 14".  Your suggestion would allow me to do a 14" bottom tier along with the other three tiers and provide a secondary cake.

If you are doing  a 6", 10" and 14" cake, it should yield 128 pieces.

Here is the cake cutting guide.  http://cateritsimple.blogspot.com/search/label/cake%20comb