My sister and I have a wedding cake to make soon. The bride to be wants it to feed 200 people and she wants separate cakes, different sizes. As I've read on here the wilton servings are not really accurate but Earlenes chart is a bit confusing as well. I'm not a math person not to mention we don't have the huge pans (18 inch and up). She says we can do 4 cakes I guess but what sizes??

Thanks in advance!!

Cindy

I need a bit more information in order to answer your question:

She is wanting 4 separate smaller multi-tiered cakes or she's wanting just 4 separate 1 tier cakes?

What shape is she wanting (round, square, oval, petal, hexagon, clipped corner square)? This will affect the number of servings.

If she wants 4 separate smaller multi-tiered cakes, is she planning on saving the top tier of all 4 cakes or just one of the cakes, or none of the cakes?

Are all 4 cakes to be the same or different flavors?

What design is she wanting on these cakes (small simple bottom borders or large complex bottom borders/flowers encircling the bottom of each tier/anything large or heavy to go at the bottom of any of the tiers)?

If you can give me the answers to the above, I can work out the pan sizes you need really quickly for you, no prob!

i use the cake serving guide i found on CC that follows indydebi's cutting method. i'll try to post it as an attachment. i would suggest to her doing square tiers, cause you'll get a lot more servings out of square than round tiers.

Thanks ladies! Finally I can actually post something. I could barely do anything on this site all day... she has actually changed the serving sizes to 150, they will be all the same flavour of cake, three layers of cake, two layers of filling. They will be separate round tiers (each standing on its own) and very simple...covered in white fondant with ribbon around the bottom. The florist will then provide the flowers for the top of each cake. She doesn't want to keep any of the tiers, will be serving everything. She thinks she will be having around 300 guests at the wedding but others will be bringing desserts as well as the wedding cake. I hope you understood my essay here Thanks for your help!

Cindy

Thanks ladies! Finally I can actually post something. I could barely do anything on this site all day... she has actually changed the serving sizes to 150, they will be all the same flavour of cake, three layers of cake, two layers of filling. They will be separate round tiers (each standing on its own) and very simple...covered in white fondant with ribbon around the bottom. The florist will then provide the flowers for the top of each cake. She doesn't want to keep any of the tiers, will be serving everything. She thinks she will be having around 300 guests at the wedding but others will be bringing desserts as well as the wedding cake. I hope you understood my essay here Thanks for your help!

Cindy

For 4 round cakes that will serve 150, based on Earlene's chart, I'd go with 6-9-12-15 with following servings:
6" = 8
9" = 22
12" = 45
15" = 80
for a total of 155 servings.

She is inviting 300 people but only serving cake to 150

Is she just cheap ( ok - on a tight budget)? Even if there will be other deserts, everyone wants wedding cake! At the very least 250 out of 300 will be expecting cake even if it is a small piece.

miriel has the sizes down for you tho, remember she gets charged for the 155 servings even tho she asked for 150 - unless she wants you to cut out 5 pieces of cake first? LOL!

She's invited 300 or she expect 300 to show up out of the 450 she's invited? Um, even if she has other desserts, she needs to have enough wedding cake for everyone, as everyone will want wedding cake, regardless.

Anyway, assuming she's really determined to have not enough cake, since it's not a stacked cake, just separate tiers, if she wants them all the same size, she can do 3 14" cakes (each one serves 51, so that would give her 153 servings).

If she wants each separate tier to be a different size, a 6-10-14-18 will give 170. Or, if you don't want to purchase the 18" pan, you can go with 10-12-14-16 which will give you 181.

Oh, and my servings are based on my serving size of 3"x1"x4", so if you are cutting the pieces smaller, you will get more servings.

HTH!

Well ladies, now you've got me wondering. The bride to be is from my sisters church and when they have weddings lots of people bring desserts as well so she's thinking she won't need that much wedding cake....I think she's expecting about 300 ppl but....hmmmm Ill figure out the cost with the 4 cakes for 180 and see what happens. She was quoted 400$ by a bakery around here but that might have been for 200 servings plus flowers...Ill have to price it and see I guess....

What about stands though....Would I just put the 16" on the table and elevate the other cakes? Do you know of any stands that would work good for this set up?? We have a micheals but they dont have much and the only other store is really expensive...she orders in supplies. 11$ for lustre dust!!! We get it for 1.89 at CC!!

I don't provide stands right now because I can't afford the investment for an item that someone else may or may not rent in the future. So I leave it up to the bride to provide a stand. A friend of mine did a similar cake set up, and she had purchased "Roman" looking columns in varying heights to have the cakes put on. I don't know where she got them.

You've got me thinking....maybe we can just use glass blocks as well.....great...how will I sleep tonight I'll be thinking about cakes....