I just got my first "official" order for a bridal shower at the end of June. The count is 40 people and from what I can gather from my reference books, it looks like an 11x15 sheet or some combination of 6,8,10" tiered would serve this many (depending on the style the bride wants). Is this accurate? Any tips would be appreciated! Thank you

the sheet cake would be enough to serve generous sized pieces, but i think the stacked might be a touch small for big enough pieces...

but if they aren't planning on eating a lot or anything then the stacked would be alright, i think i would put the slices at about 30 for the stacked and the sheet would be 30-40, but those are just my opinions and i don't know how big of pieces those would be!

but i hope i sort of helped...

a 10" sq serves 40-46 servings if it's 4" high.

I did one for today, it was a 10" base, with an 8" dummy and a 6" anniversary layer. i did that to serve 45 people. an 8" cake serves 20... so if you were to serve all the of those stacked you would have 72 servings.

An 11x15" sheet serves 35 standard pieces (2x2), so I would suggest bumping it up to a 12x18 for a group of 40. That's 54 standard pieces.

As far as tiered cakes, you can use any chart you like to come up with the serving sizes you need. Here are two popular ones:

http://www.earlenescakes.com/ckserchart.htm

http://www.wilton.com/wedding/cakeinfo/cakedata.cfm

Even by Earlene's chart, which is generous, a 6", 8", 10" serves 53, so you would have plenty with that combination.

Thank you for those links! A question about the Earlene's link though (I apologize for maybe not understanding since I am just starting with cakes) but why is there such a huge different between servings and bride's servings??

The chart is really two charts - columns A, B, C, and E are for single-tiers. Look in the yellow 'C' column if you are just wanting to find the number of servings for a single tier.

Columns F, and G go with the FAR right column with the size combinations. Earlene likes at least a 3" difference between her tiers, that is why you don't see the 6", 8", 10" combination on there.

The pink 'F' column indicates how many servings you would get from the size combination in the far right column (to the left of the blue column) if you did NOT serve the top tier.

The blue 'G' column indicates how many servings you would get from the far right column if you DID serve the top tier.

Thank you so much! That definitely helps