I am fairly new to baking wedding cakes. But I have a trouble figuring out what size cakes to suggest to cover the serving sizes. I refer to the Wilton serving size guides but when baking the cakes I always doubt myself if there will be enough to go around. For example, my last two wedding cakes were for friends and I know I gave them much more than what was needed but I know I can't keep doing that.

I have a cake order coming up and the person wants a 3 tiered round cake to feed 80 people and I am struggling what to suggest. Do I go with a 12", 9" and 6"? According to Wilton, that would feed 100 people and I can not think of any other combination that would feed 80 people. Would you charge her for the 80 servings or the 100 servings? Or do you just charge her for what servings she wants and that is it? I could really use some advise from you guys.

~Christy~

"I'd like a 10" round, 2-layer cake, that I'm going to eat all by myself. So that's serves one, right? Here's your three bucks."

No.... you charge them for the number of servings the cake is designed to serve, not how many they plan to cut from it.

I go by the Wilton Wedding chart. I tell customers, "This cake will serve about 30 people (25-35) depending on how you cut it. A standard serving is about the size of a folded over peanut butter sandwich. If you think you'll be cutting them bigger than that, i recommend you buy a bigger cake.

KFC's 16 pc bucket is designed to serve 8 people of two pcs each. But if you plan to eat 4 pcs per person, you don't get it for half price just because you're going to feed only half that number of people.

Listen to Indy. The Wilton wedding servings are PLENTY OF CAKE for a wedding. The Wilton party servings are PLENTY of cake for party servings. The difference is that at a wedding there's usually lots of other food, alcohol and possibly other desserts.

That said a 6/8/10 serving the entire cake serves 78. Close enough.

Thanks so much for your replies. I really value your advice.

~Christy~