Well I met with the bride today, It went pretty well. she picked her cake....
I will attach photo... instead of the little white flowers, she wants them blue, with a white dot in the middle of the flower..
I was going to charge her 200.00.. but i made her a list of all of the ingrediants i will need.. totaling a little under 100, so I will get 100 for making the cake.. do you think that is good?
What size cake pans do you think these are?
Im really nervous on making a stacked cake.. any advice will be great. I have read everything on stacked cakes.. and i still dont get it!! LOL!!
how does it go?
thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm very excited for you! I don't think you're charging enough though. Seems like you're doing it for little more than cost. What about all the time you'll be putting into making this beautiful cake? What about delivery? Is that included. If you feel comfortable with the price you've set, go with it and enjoy the experience. I think it would be worth more though.

Good for you!! The cakes looks to be done in 2" increments...possibly 8", 10" and 12". Do you know how many people this will need to serve? Since there aren't a lot of detailed decorations, I think your price is fair

LIsa, thanks for the link to the stacked cakes!! that is what that is considered right?
mrs missy, they are looking to feed about 100 people...
You are right,,, there isnt a lot of detail.. so that is another reason why i thought it was ok..

YOu think i can do this?? LOL im so nervous.
Its due on the 21st, saturday. wedding starts at 2pm...
when do i make the cakes? friday nite and decorate sat. moring
or should i decorate friday nite??

Personally I would decorate Friday and put the finishing touches on Sat morning. That works best for me not adding more stress to the situation.

You can do this for sure! I think I would bake early in the week and decorate Friday. That way if you have any problems, you won't be rushed to fix them.

If the wedgins is on Saturday, I'd say plan to finish all your decorating Friday night. Then plan the rest of your base icing and baking back from that. That way, if anything goes wrong, you have time for a Plan B.

Decorating it Saturday morning for a Saturday afternoon would just be cutting it TOO close for my nerves. It always seems like I get the "unexpected surprised" (and not the good ones!) when I'm trying to do things last minute.

I think the more time you give yourself, the better off you'll be.

For the 100 servings, are you going to count the top tier? Will it be saved or served? If saved (most of the time), I think you'd need to make the cakes 14, 12 and 10. This is going by Earlene's chart.

I usually go with Earlene's serving chart too! The servings are a bit more generous than other charts and I feel better about that. Definitely bake early in the week and have it completed by Friday..way too much stress otherwise.

thank you guys!!!!!!! !! when you say bake early in the week, do you mean like wednesday or thursday? then will i have to freeze the cake? or can i leave it out wrapped in foil??

It's a beautifully simple elegant cake. One of my favorite designs. You sure can do it! It'll be beautiful with the blue flowers on the sides. Since it's for a friend you probably charged right but you should charge more if you do one for an ordinary customer. I just made a full sheet cake for my bosses open house and I spent almost 5 hours on it not counting the baking time. I only charged her $40, but I'd charge anyone else $50 for what I did. If I'd done roses on it I would go higher I think. So much time can go into the simplist design you have to figure that into your charge. If I have to buy pans for a cake I consider that just a necessity and know I'm just adding to my collection of supplies, but if it's something very ususal that I can't see using much (which hasn't happened yet) I might add something to my charge. Three weeks isn't a lot of notice. I was asked about doing a wedding cake a couple months ago with only a little over two weeks notice. I finally called and said I couldn't do it because of a conflict with my schedule. I almost went into a panic at the thought of only that much time to plan etc. It was more than a simple blessing that I really had something else scheduled into that time slot! PTL!!

may i ask where you foun this pic at? Im donig a wedding cake next month for a customer and i would love to talk her into this one... haha... simple enough that i know i could do it with no problems!!!!

everyone gave great answers the price sounds fair for a beginner....... they are right as you progress you should charge more. I would definately complete the cake the night before as the closer you are the more easier to make mistakes due to nerves.
I love stacked cakes as they are easy to set up take no extras stuff like pillars etc......

besides your plates and dowels also only one box is needed for transporting......
good luck....

Here's some tips that I have read from the time that I have spent on cakecentral.com
1) If it saves you stress, decorate the individual layers at home and then stack on site
2) Make sure you have extra icing and tools with you when you go to set up the cake, just in case
3) Put a dowel rod through the center of all the cakes to avoid any layers from shifting
4) To avoid the fingers in the icing look from stacking: measure and cut your dowels, insert them into the layer that you will be stacking on, then pull the back up so that they stick out an inch or two, then as you are placing the next layer on, slowly place the cake on top and let gravity do the work when it nears the next layer
5) Relax, take a deep breath, count to 10, step away for a couple of seconds and then go at it again if something is frustrating you
6) DON'T FORGET THE CAMERA!!
Glad to hear that you got this job...the design that the bride picked out will look just beautiful when you are done...don't forget to take pictures and post them here for us to see... HAVE FUN!!
m0use

You are going to do a great job on this. I wanted to add one more suggestion to MrsMissey's list, if you have a Gramma or a close friend available to watch the baby for you on Friday, while you'll be doing the decorating, that would save you a lot of stress too!

oh wow!! I really want to thank you all for all of your support. You are all so awesome! thank you!!!!
I have class tomorrow for wilton.. .im gonna ask the teacher if she can maybe take me out to the floor and tell me all about stacking! LOL! I dont know why. but i just dont GET IT!!! DUHHHHHHHHHHHHH. Its probably the simplest thing. Are the dowels just something that go into the cake to support it from not shifting? and does the next layer sit on the dowels?
Thanks for the tips mouse! Im printing out this whole post!!
THANK YOU GUYS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
AND boy oh boy! beleive me i will post pictures!! on the flowers on the cake.. is there a tip to that? or to me they just look like a center dot with 5 little dots around it...

~Ute

What a beautiful cake to start out with momof3jotynjake. Definitely bake it ahead of time. It will be less stressful. I never, ever wait to the day before the wedding to do my cakes ... I'll have them all baked 2 or 3 days before the wedding. I usually crumb coat them to seal the off and keep them cool. The day before the wedding, I final coat them, decorate and get all my items together that I'll need to take with me (icing, tips, decorating bags, dowel sticks/rods, cake plates, etc). I know you'll do a great job on the cake and as always, if you have any questions, come here... there are so many people here that can give advice and can help answer any questions you may have... Best of luck to you!!!

You COULD stack all three tiers and transport it that way, but I'd be VERY leary. One never really knows when one will have to slam on the brakes!

When I have a cake due on Saturday, I bake all the cakes on Wednesday night. Then I leave them out to cool completely overnight. I leave them on the cooling racks and only cover them with loosley with a clean dish towel.
Then on Thursday night, I put on the base layer of icing. A "crumb coat" as I've always used it is the regualr icing (buttercream) that you put on thinly and it doesn't matter if it gets crumbs in it. Hence, the name. Then, after the crumb coat crusts, you can add a clean, thicker, crumb-free coat of buttercream that everyone will oohhh and ahhh over. I take my time on the base icing, let it crust for a while and then go back and try to smooth it. When I get to the point where I feel like I'm not making any more progress, then I'm done. For that night.

On Friday, if you feel you MUST, you can use a Viva paper towel or a piece of parchment paper and work on smoothing your base coat AGAIN. But this step is probably only necessary if you're as obsessive-compulsive as I am! Once you've come to terms with your base icing, then it's time to decorate the layers.

If I were making a three tier cake, I'd follow the suggestions of some of the others on this site: decorate the layers at home, then set it all up at the reception site. I've even gone so far as to insert my dowels in the tiers (leaving an inch or so sticking up to avoid finger marks) before leaving my kitchen JUST to make sure that those didn't get left at home!

Take your time getting to the receptoin and take extra icing and tools to fix anything that happens in route or while you're assembling the cake.

Give yourself plenty of time and remember to beathe. It'll all come out fine, as long as you remember breathe.

Just want to remind you to get cake boards - cardboards, that will fit for each tier.. The cake board is what rests on the dowels and keeps the cake from just falling through from the weight. Get a board exactly the same size as the tier or even 1" larger if you're going to do a border prior to stacking. Also, make sure you get a cake board of something very strong - like wood, to go under the whole thing, because it gets very heavy.

If you're going to use fondant on top of the buttercream you can make that ahead of time like this week. I'm going to do that for my wedding cake, also for May 21. You can make the roses out of fondant or royal at this point, too. Or even the buttercream ones and keep those in the freezer.

I'm pretty sure that the pictured cake is a 14", 12", 10". Recommend you measure how many cups each one takes to fill up 1/2-2/3 so you can get enough cake mixes to fill them all.. and double that if you're doing two layers on each as it looks like that one is.

Best of luck!
~AngelWendy