AThe best friend of my daughters is getting married in June and is doing a "Desert Bar" in place of serving cake to their guests. She wanted to know if I would do a simple cake for their "cake cutting" - noting that it wasn't going to be served to guests. She said two tier would be fine, just plain white, and decorate with fresh flowers. The site is 3 hours away and I have decided I would do it if she would let me use cake dummies. I think I want to do 3 tiers and I would really prefer to do the top tier as the real cake and the bottom 2 tiers as faux. Is this acceptable since it isn't being served? Is this actually the easiest way to do it? Should I just stick with the 2 tiers and do the top one faux and the bottom real? All advice is welcome!

AAre they bringing in a bunch of sand and maybe some palms for an oasis?

AFunny you should say that, the wedding is at an upscale hotel on an island off of San Diego, CA.... hahaha...

AOh, hahahahaha... my bad, "Dessert Bar" hahaha...

I do lots of cake with fake tiers at the bottom. no doweling, no stressing about collapsing :)

The only thing I find is that the cake is a little top heavy, so if you are moving it just be careful. My hubby normally carries my cakes around and one nearly went flying as he was expecting the weight at the bottom :)

the cake in this pic is all dummies except for the top one.

AWOW! That is awesome! Did you sand down the corner's of your dummies?

I have made the mix of fake and real tiers for wedding cakes (5 so far).  Usually the top one has been the real tier, however I had one couple who wanted the middle tier to be the real tier because they wanted the guests to think they were going to save the top tier to eat for their anniversary.  

I guess I'd ask your couple if they cared which tier it was that was real and if they have no preference, I'd go for the top tier.  They are pretty easy to put together and, like Cakechick123 said, pretty light in comparison to an all real wedding cake.

AI love your cake! Great design! Okay, I think going with real cake on the top, so just RI the dummy to the cake board and just set the real cake on top when I stack it?

I just use my regular buttercream frosting and it sticks ok, but I also dowel through it into the sytrofoam.  However, royal icing is probably even more stable.  Especially if it's 3 hours away.

Great idea about rolling the sytrofoam on the counter.  I hate the noise it makes, too!!! 

Looking for advice on stacking 3 tiers of real cake (6"-8"-10") on top of a 12" styro bottom tier--All decorated with Swiss meringue buttercream (no fondant).

Should I decorate all tiers like normal (fully frost and chill each tier, then stack from the bottom up)? Obviously, I'll dowel the real cakes as usual. I don't think I need to dowel the 12" styro tier, but I'll definitely hot glue it to the drum. My concern is that the weight of the top 3 tiers of real cake will squish out the buttercream on top of the 12" styro tier. I've never stacked real cake on top of a buttercream dummy tier, so any advice is appreciated.

The cake will be refrigerated overnight for safer transport in the morning. The delivery is 20 mins away.

Stack/work on it exactly you would if it was all real cake.  No, the b'cream should not squish out but then I don't use Swiss meringue.  Have time to make a trial?  Just ice the top of your 12"er, then put something heavy on top.  Might want to put some wax paper between the 12"er & the heavy object so it doesn't get messy :)