I have a wedding cake to do in April and I am baffled as to what sizes I should use. I have gone over Earlenes and Wiltons charts and cant make up my mind.
Here is the dilemma- I need 4 square tiers to feed 120 people. For the look of the cake I want 4 inch tiers but I still want the cake to look big enough around. Everything I came up with gave me way too much cake.
Any suggestions are appreciated!!!
ideas, you could do the bottom layer 4 inches, then the next 2 inches, then 4 inches and the top 4 inches. the two 2" layers would give you half the servings (and then serve 2x2x2 party sizes instead of 1x2x4)
another thought is just tell the bride that you have to make more cake so then she will be able to serve larger portions. Then let her know she can have different flavors of cake so she wont have to have other desserts and this will SAVE her money.
I just had a bride order 120 servings for 50 people because they wanted 2x2x4 portions or the option of smaller servings but then people could have more than one flavor. On top of that, they ordered a grooms cake to feed 30! they dont want anyother desserts, just lots of cake flavors.
works for me, i carge by the 1x2x4 no matter what size you cut the cake at the reception.
dummy cakes dont save money, only cake. if i am paying for a dummy and the decorations then i want the cake! and hey, cake freezes great so any leftovers can be nibbled away at a latter time, or like when i got married, all the out of town family ate it for breakfast and snacks and it was ALL GONE before we got back from out 3 day homeymoon... and we ordered extra extra cake! oh well, at least we had a honeymmon cake and an anniversary cake 
There's nothing wrong with telling a bride, "You can't have a 4 tier cake for only 120 people", and then go into her options .... lots of leftover cake, styrofoam layers, etc. Although, when you tell her that a 12/10/8/6 serves 172, that she is PAYING for 172 .... not the 120.
(Although ..... a 12/10/8/6 ROUND will serve about 130).
I tell brides that from the start. "How many people are you inviting?", which is then followed by "you can have up to 4 tiers (or 3, or 5) with that number of servings." THEN we get into design 'n stuff.
Ok...I went and took a look at Earlene's chart... Here is what I came up with:
12" square = 60 servings
10" square = 40 servings
8" square = 24 servings
cake for 124 servings
6" square = 12 servings and your gift for their anniversary cake 
that gives you the 4 tiers that you want without a lot of extra cake.
Good luck,
Pat
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