I found this picture in the Weddings Gallery here and my client has chosen this as her wedding cake. This is my first wedding (can we say NERVES??!!!) and I was hoping to pm or email the person who originally did this and get some pointers, such as what tip she used, etc. I looked at her profile (it's PaulaTraverso) and she has no posts and this was her only picture. So......I was wondering if some of you more experienced decorators can give me some help! I need it large enough to feed 200 people. What size layers should I use to accomplish this? The bride wants it all in buttercream instead of fondant. What is the best buttercream to use to still be able to achieve the smooth look and curved edge? What's the best way to attach ribbon, and should I use a strip of wax paper under the ribbon or does that depend on what kind of ribbon it is? Also, the bride wants the flowers on the sides to be edible, so I told her I could make them out of fondant to better achieve the look rather than buttercream, but for the top, she wants to buy silk flowers. Will this look okay? I told her I would need the silk flowers ASAP to match the colors (white and periwinkle), but I'm still wondering if it will look odd having silk on top and fondant for the rest of the flowers. Any other tips and suggestions would be WONDERFUL!!! Thanks all! 
Tracy
Just look at each tier as if it were just one cake, get a garland marker to mark the string work, and go. I did a wedding cake based on "Tulip Splendor" out of Wilton 2002(?) YB...I did gumpaste tulips and my mom did a silk tulip topper. It looked great. (no photo posted...yet).
well, I don't know if this helps, but looks like she used a #2 tip for the scallops and dots and a #4 or #5 for the "beaded" border. You can try the "rolled buttercream" recipe found here in the recipe tab. As for the rose thingee, well if you are good at it the fondant ones would look better than the faux roses!!! (I don't know if you would want to do this or not but maybe make a little spray for the top of the cake JIC she falls in love with your fondant roses). If she doesn't take em well maybe you can save it and use it on another cake for someone else. Not like they are gonna go bad in a week or something. LOL
SUELA - Can you buy garland markers at Michael's, do you know? Do they mark just the distance between the swags, or make an imprint of the swag itself that you pipe over? I'd love to see pics of your Tulip cake!
chaptlips - Yeah, I was thinking about making enough to do the topper and see what she thinks. At least I would have it in case the silk ones didn't really look right.
So any suggestions on sizes? Thanks!
Yes you can buy it at Michael's, might be able to buy one here too. It marks the distance and marks the whole swag as well, with little pin point dots that you then pipe over.
Tulip cake (and many others) were taken with regular film before the days of my digital camera. I need to scan them all,before I can post.
how many guests are there? I would go from there. Unless she wants it exactly like the picture. I think that looks like ummm, lemme see here, the pic looks like a 14" a 12" then the second tier looks like maybe an 8" and a 6". As for servings per tier, I still haven't gotten the hang of that yet.
6" = 12
8" = 24
12" = 56
14" = 78
total = 170 you can replace them for
16,14,10,8 total 216 plus the 8" for the first anniversary, total 240
Thanks Claudine! BTW, how did you figure the servings? What chart do you use?
I just went by chart in a wilton magazine.
You're very welcome!
Claudia
I had no idea you could buy contoured pans! DUH! Can you tell I'm still really new at all this?? 
I just thought she had trimmed the top edge to be contoured like that. The contoured pans would be soooo much easier! Thanks for the link!!
earlenescakes.com has a bit more generous serving chart than wilton's. To me it looks like the swags are with a bit bigger tip-maybe #3. I love the cake dividing and marker set. It makes life much easier!
I really like this bc icing:
http://www.baking911.com/recipes/cakes/buttercreamtami.htm
There are quite a few threads about using ribbon on your cakes. Also study up on proper support for tiered cakes-very important-you don't want your beautiful creation to fall or crush under its own weight! There are many threads about this too with lots and lots of helpful info.
Hope these help!
Thank you so much dodibug! I'm planning on making a "practice" cake in a couple of weeks. I was only going to do a tier or two, but DH has convinced me to go ahead and make and assemble the whole thing, just so I know exactly what to expect, and learn from my mistakes before the actual wedding! Smart guy, my hubby! 
Thanks for the link to the icing. I'll update everyone when I do my trial run!
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